Local Techno Futures | 2025

The imaginations behind almost all digital technologies we engage with today are Euro-American. From Desktop Computers, Laptops, Smartphones to Artificial Intelligence, all of them have originated from the imaginations held by technologists in the so-called Global North.

Regions in the Global South are places that have seen rich, plural forms of creative arts and crafts practices that have emerged historically and continue to flourish through individual practitioners. Folk and traditional forms as well as new forms of creative writing (in and for regional languages), oral storytelling, performance arts, textile arts, musical arts, etc, have evolved with and through a range of technological advances in our places.

In Channapatna and in Bidar, our explorations of alternative futures are enabled by ongoing collaborative infrastructuring initiatives: Community Mesh Networks, Participatory Geo-Spatial Labs, Climate Resource Center, and Community Knowledge Archives.

Both the places and their ongoing initiatives, offer fertile grounds to actively and creatively engage with community members, and their places and practices, and co-imagine and co-produce speculative alternative futures of human-technology relationships.