Design and Technological Disobedience

Design, as I said before is the ideas and actions behind the creation of an object or product. Technological disobedience is the ideas and actions behind the creation of objects or products from reused materials, specifically in Cuba.

For example, the Cuban people made children's toys out of different household materials. Also, common across the island, people made aluminum tray antennas because they were a common resource laying around. Cuban's also made transportation better by taking bikes and adding carts on the back of them to transport more than just a single person and also holding boxes to have somewhere to store stuff when riding. Anything during the crisis time period that a Cuban wanted, they made themselves using any materials they could get there hands on. Today, this is looked at as artistic.

In my time, I have seen technological disobedience, right in my hometown, I remember when I was younger, I asked my mother why the old run down house at the end of the street had big aluminum pans hanging from the roof. Also, a few years later, we got a dog and loved to go biking. Not being the richest of families, my father decided to make a riding crate for my dog to be pulled along the back of his bike. He used scrap metal, my old tricycle rear end, and also a pillow to make a towable crate. Until now, I never had an actual term to describe what he did, but now I know it was technological disobedience.

To me, when someone says hack or hacking, I immediately get drawn to computer programming, as does everyone I believe. However, there are multiple meanings for hack outside of computer programming. First of all, to hack at something, such as a tree branch. Hack in this context is the rough chopping action. Secondly and more importantly, hack can mean a trick or tip, such as a life hack. In that context, hack is something you can do to make your life easier.