#4 [STUDY] Community Networks: A Place-Based Approach for Sustainability/ インドネシアの「竹の電波塔」に見る、土着のインフラデザイン
現代に欠かせないインフラとなったインターネット。その普及を支える電波塔を、竹でつくるまちがインドネシアにある──。ジャカルタ南東の都市バンドンを拠点とする、アート・カルチャー・メディアのプラットフォームCommon Roomの創業者グスタフ・イスカンダル、そして彼らと協働する草の根イノベーションの研究者、レジーナ・シュポッシュ。2人の共同執筆から探る、持続可能で地域に根ざした開発のあり方とは。
After decades of international development work, one can’t help but wonder, why there is still no equitable access to water, electricity, or information. What is wrong with the systems we have built and how are bottom-up initiatives addressing the gaps? In this article, we explore the roles that community, trust, and design can play in facilitating self-directed development and decolonizing development sustainably.
このニュースレターは、寄稿記事などの原稿を他の言語に翻訳せず原文のまま掲載しています。そのため、読者のみなさんには DeepL や Google Translateといったインターネット上の翻訳アプリやウェブサービスを積極的に利用することを推奨しています。また、翻訳の際の補助線として「編集部コメント」と題し、原文の背景や編集メンバーの所感を日本語と英語で掲載していますので、合わせてご覧ください。
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Facilitating the autonomous, intrinsic adoption of community networks (community-maintained internet infrastructures) have become one of the central activities of Common Room, a collective that was born in the post-authoritarian era, after a nationwide unrest in 1998 that brought down Suharto’s decades-long regime. Back then, a multidisciplinary group of fresh graduates came together as a community, and coinciding with rapidly growing access to the internet, started one of the first art and new media centers in the country. Based in Bandung, the city of design, they’ve developed networks and support systems of communities focused on social issues. This means that over the past two decades, they built collaborations between unlikely allies to support locally embedded and sustainable design for an almost rebellious, post-colonial and self-directed development of the country. Most recently, they’ve started working with Indigenous and rural communities in Indonesia and realized that in some cases, they had to spend years to tactfully rebuild the trust of locals broken by previous external practices, which often caused more harm than good.
One of the co-founders of Common Room, Gustaff H. Iskandar shares his reflections around their journey and strategies on his last day of activities with a rural community in Jayapura, Papua:
Why Community Networks?
Nimboran District is one of the many rural areas that do not yet have adequate internet access. Based on a survey by the Indonesian Internet Service Providers Association (APJII), in 2022, 27% of the population of Indonesia, or around 75 million people did not have access to the internet. Since the pandemic, the internet has become an essential tool needed by a lot of people. In addition to supporting communication needs and access to information, the internet is also needed to improve public services, including education and health, as well as to support post-pandemic recovery efforts. In some areas, the internet is critical to mitigating the impacts of climate change or and other disaster events, and delivering various services needed by the common citizens.
Starting with the Ciptagelar Indigenous Community
Our engagement with the Community Network (CN) movement began with the development of an urban-rural collaboration platform that was developed together with the Ciptagelar Indigenous community in 2013. At that time, this activity was focused on joint efforts to develop creativity and innovation by observing various local knowledge in the Ciptagelar Indigenous community region in West Java. By 2016, this activity began to focus on developing internet infrastructure needed by the local community. Through an initiative led by Abah Ugi as the customary leader of the Ciptagelar Indigenous community, this effort was then carried out in several stages. We co-developed a mini data center that was utilized as a local knowledge management platform. We also made a map of the forest area which is an important element for the culture and tradition of Indigenous people who have lived in this region for a very long time.
Decolonizing and Training the “Brainware” to Scale
In addition to experimenting with network infrastructure development using radio technology, the ongoing efforts to develop the internet infrastructure were also initiated by holding a series of training activities that involved local residents. Several representatives of young people from the surrounding villages were involved in training and capacity building so they could build the CN infrastructure and manage internet services independently.
For us, the involvement of Indigenous community in the CN movement is also part of the decolonization process, bearing in mind that Indigenous peoples and rural communities have very often experienced disembeddedness and alienation in the modern day development agenda.
As the CN infrastructure development and utilization has diverse contexts by nature, this effort also requires a variety of approaches and strategies with several core components that are important to recognize. One such component is the “brainware”, or humans’ ability to use soft- and hardware. In order for CN development projects to be sustainable, it is essential that the community members themselves develop the necessary technical capacity and digital skills. In addition to developing adequate brainware within the community, CN development and utilization projects also need to consider other related aspects such as policy, security, affordability, and meaningful connectivity to ensure their sustainability and impact on improving the quality of life of common citizens.
How to Scale Through an Education- and Place-Based Approach?
In order to support the expansion of the CN movement, we initiated the School of Community Networks (SCN) program in 2021 in Ciptagelar. By the end of 2022 to early 2023, these efforts began to bring interest from different stakeholders. Apart from being successful in supporting the formation of CN teams in multiple regions, the idea to develop such infrastructure has begun to receive attention and support: all the way up from government agencies at the national level, down to the government institution at the district and village levels. However, the development of the CN movement in each region has various approaches and characteristics. In some areas, we engage directly with local residents and customary institutions, while in others local governments or community organizations act as catalysts. This diversity in approaches reflects the heterogeneity and complexity of contexts and situations that exist in Indonesia.
One example of how design can reflect the diversity of contexts within the Asia-Pacific is the case of a bamboo tower developed in collaboration with the Research Center of Cultural Product and Environment (PPPBL) at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). The long delivery times of steel towers (in rural areas, and during the pandemic as global supply chains broke down) have been hindering CN projects. In a project resembling distributed manufacturing, a blueprint for a bamboo tower was developed which enables community members to easily build and repair a tower using locally sourced materials. It also includes several customizable elements for each community to decorate the tower with to reflect the local culture, traditions, or customs. The bamboo tower in this sense is sustainable and quintessentially Indonesian - but reproducible anywhere.
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5L Principles for Sustainability
On the technical level, the ongoing efforts to develop and utilize CN infrastructure in Indonesia need to be developed with the framework that we call the 5L Principles. These principles are universal and can support place-based design for the sustainable development of any community around the world. The principles are:
Low cost,
Low energy,
Low maintenance,
Low learning curve, and
Local support.
These five principles were developed to ensure access to technology, energy sources, human resources, as well as the support of various stakeholders at the local level. In addition to knowledge transfer and capacity building (including digital literacy), the efforts to develop and utilize CN infrastructure need to be buttressed by affirmative policies and regulations to anticipate the unintended impacts of internet and digital media utilization to prevent the dissemination of hoax and fake news, disinformation, misinformation, or threats of illicit content. Putting the right policies and regulations in place is also critical to safeguarding the autonomy and sustainability of CN infrastructure development and utilization projects into the future. It is important to remember, however, that at the centre of these projects and what makes them possible is the network of people. Local people. And although empowering local communities has always been a long and winding road, we believe this is the only way towards transitioning to a truly sustainable world.
Text by Gustaff Harriman Iskandar & Regina Sipos
編集部コメント Notes from the Editorial Team
地域の外から新しい技術を持ち込む時、往々にしてその土地の暮らしや慣習を無視した方法が取られてしまうことがある。その反省から、コモンルームは地域の人を主体とし、彼らが疎外されることなく、新しい技術を使いこなせるようになるまでのプロセスを忍耐強く支援するとともに、土地の文脈に合わせた多様な展開に伴走する。地域の素材「竹」でつくられた電波塔は、place-based な試みとして象徴的だ。業者が鉄塔を設置してインフラの整備が完了するのではなく、そこに住む人たちが土地の素材で塔をつくり、直しながら使い続ける未来が射程に入っている。竹の電波塔のまわりにはインターネットを使う多世代が集い、知恵と技術を継承し、インターネットの可能性について言葉を交わす情景が浮かび上がる。これは自律的な地域の証であるばかりでなく、コミュニティの信頼の証ともなっていくのだろう。インターネットの導入という超地域的な情報ネットワークの整備が、地域内の人的ネットワークの増強にも寄与した好例だといえる。(高坂)
In 1951, the United Nations published a report entitled “Measures for the economic development of under-developed countries”. Here’s an excerpt from that report.
There is a sense in which rapid economic progress is impossible without painful adjustments. Ancient philosophies have to be scrapped; old social institutions have to disintegrate; bonds of caste, creed, and race have to burst; and large numbers of persons who cannot keep up with progress have to have their expectations of a comfortable life frustrated. Very few communities are willing to pay the full price of economic progress.
A cursory look at this text is enough to identify certain overtones that reverberate throughout the report: the spurious divide between “developed” and “underdeveloped” countries, the very narrow definition of progress measured in purely economic terms, and the not-so subtle implication that those who do not subscribe to the same worldview as the authors of the report (mostly white men) tend to be “lazy”. The “modern day development agenda” has been, from its inception, wedded to colonialist conceptions of the world.
By engaging and empowering the local peoples with respect for their culture and practices, i.e. by taking a fundamentally place-based approach, the CN movement decolonizes development practices and instils autonomy in the community as a whole, thereby dissolving the self-contradiction inherent in the concept of “sustainable development”. Come to think of it, maybe the only way to make development sustainable at all is to decolonize it. (Edward)
Gustaff Harriman Iskandar
Gustaff Harriman Iskandar was born in Sukabumi on 16th of August 1974. He graduated from the Fine Arts Department, Bandung Institute of Technology in 1999. After finishing his studies, he ran Poros Art Management, actively curating, writing on, and organizing visual art exhibitions until 2000, and founded Trolley Magazine (2000 – 2001), a local independent magazine that focuses on art, culture, music and fashion. At the end of 2001, he co-founded Bandung Center for New Media Arts together with Reina Wulansari, R. E. Hartanto and T. Reza Ismail. In 2004, he developed the Common Room Networks Foundation (Common Room), an open platform for art, culture and ICT/Media. Gustaff currently lives and works in Bandung where, together with Reina Wulansari and other colleagues, he continues to work on his art and develop projects and initiatives that integrate arts, science, and technology. He also writes for and speaks at conferences and other speaking engagements, alongside running a small farm in Sukabumi, a cosy town tucked away in West Java - Indonesia.
Twitter: commonroom_id
Instagram: commonroom_id
Regina Sipos
Regina Sipos is a researcher at the intersection of technology and society. She wrote her PhD thesis focusing on intrinsic and collaborative technology design and innovation in grassroots communities and developed the EU-funded Critical Making project. She is the Founder and Director of the Social-Digital Innovation Initiative, facilitating the cross-pollination of open source technology and social innovation. She designed and managed the United Nations' first global co-creation and incubation platform for social entrepreneurs working with technology at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) before moving to Berlin to advise Ashoka Germany on their Digital Fellowship strategy. As a consultant, she has advised the FCDO UK, BMZ/GIZ Germany, ITU, CERN, Ars Electronica and other entities on participative methods and digital development.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siposregina/