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Users in the Dark: The Development of a User-Controlled Technology in the Czech Wireless Network Community

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Hacking Europe

Part of the book series: History of Computing ((HC))

Abstract

“Ronja” is a piece of hardware used for sending data by means of visible light. The technology was developed by users in the Czech wireless network community. The philosophy behind the project states that anyone lacking previous knowledge of electronics should be able to build the device by themselves. In order to realize this vision, the mechanics and electronics were designed with generally available and off-the-shelf components. The instructions for building the device are published on the Internet under a free license. These principles have been summarized under the label “user-controlled technology.” At the center of the case study is a schism in the Czech wireless community over the commercialization of Ronja. The article looks at how the growing market demand for free space optics in the Czech wireless community called forth a redesign of the product in line with the requirements of mass production. The relation between a “democratization of innovation” and the entrepreneurship that flourished around the product was marked by internal tensions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Denisa Kera. 2012. Hackerspaces and DIY-bio in Asia: Connecting science and community with open data, kits and protocols. Journal of Peer Production 1(2), 1–8. Available http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-2/peer-reviewed-papers/diybio-in-asia/. Accessed 5 May 2013.

  2. 2.

    My research is based on 21 in-depth interviews with people who used, built, or in other ways contributed to the Czech Ronja project in five countries: Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Most of the study was done during a 6-month field trip to the Czech Republic in autumn 2008. A secondary source of information has been websites related to the Ronja project. The most important document is the mailing list of the official Ronja site (http://ronja.twibright.com/) and the discussion forum run by the Czech wireless network community (http://czfree.net). All interviews were held in English, but most of the written documents were in Czech or Slovakian.

  3. 3.

    Ruth Oldenziel, Adri Albert de la Bruhèze, and Onno de Wit. 2005. Europe’s mediation junction: Technology and consumer society in the twentieth century. History and Technology 21(1): 107–139; Lorraine Daston. 2009. Science studies and the history of science. Critical Inquiry 35(4): 798–813; Dominique Pestre. 2013. À contre-science – Politique et savoirs des sociétés contemporaines. Paris: Seuil.

  4. 4.

    Scholars abiding to Innovation Studies were the first ones to jump on this latest trend, see Kerstin Balka, Christina Raasch, and Cornelius Herstatt. 2009. Open source enters the world of atoms: A statistical analysis of open design. First Monday 14(11). Accessed 5 May 2013; Sonali Shah. 2006. Open beyond software. In Open sources 2.0 – The continuing evolution, ed. Chris DiBona, Danese Cooper, and Mark Stone, 339–360. Beijing: O’Reilly.

  5. 5.

    Jan Hudec, 2008-12-08.

  6. 6.

    Karel Kulhavy, 2008-11-16.

  7. 7.

    Petr Seliger, 2008-10-21.

  8. 8.

    Karel Kulhavy, 2008-11-16.

  9. 9.

    Karel Kulhavy, 2008-11-16.

  10. 10.

    Ellen Oost, Stephan Verhaegh, and Nelly Oudshoorn. 2009. From innovation community to community innovation: User-initiated innovation in wireless Leiden. Science, Technology, & Human Values 34(184): 182–205; Christina Dunbar-Hester. 2009. ‘Free the spectrum!’ Activist encounters with old and new media technology. New Media & Society 11(1–2): 221–240.

  11. 11.

    Petr Simandl, 2008-10-27.

  12. 12.

    Michael Polak, 2009-01-16.

  13. 13.

    COM. 2009. Progress report on the single European electronic communications market 2007, 14th report. 24 March 2009. Brussels: EC.

  14. 14.

    Lada Myslik, 2008-01-09.

  15. 15.

    Fred Turner. 2006. From counter culture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. Chicago: Chicago University Press. See also Nevejan, Caroline, and Alexander Badenoch. 2014. How Amsterdam invented the Internet: European networks of significance, 1980–1995. In Hacking Europe. From computer cultures to demoscenes, ed. Gerard Alberts and Ruth Oldenziel, 189–217. New York: Springer.

  16. 16.

    Maxigas. 2012. Hacklabs and hackerspaces: Tracing two genealogies. Journal of Peer Production 1(2), 1–10. Available: http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-2/peer-reviewed-papers/hacklabs-and-hackerspaces/. Accessed 5 May 2013.

  17. 17.

    Adrian Johns. 2009. Piracy as a business force. Culture Machine 10, 44–63. Accessed 5 May 2013.

  18. 18.

    Richard Barbrook. 1987. A new way of talking: Community radio in 1980s Britain. Science as Culture 1(1): 81–129.

  19. 19.

    Ondrej Tesar, 2008-10-05.

  20. 20.

    Jakub Horky, 2009-01-17.

  21. 21.

    WifiSoft.org Foundation. 2007. Annual report 2007. http://wifisoft.org/trac/. Accessed 20 Jan 2012.

  22. 22.

    Marcel Hecko, 2008-12-17.

  23. 23.

    Lada Myslik, 2008-01-09; Petr Seliger, 2008-10-21.

  24. 24.

    David Kolovratnik, 2008-12-14.

  25. 25.

    Jakub Horky, 2009-01-17.

  26. 26.

    Ondrej Zajicek, 2008-12-14.

  27. 27.

    Karel Obadal, Ronja mailing list, 2004-11-01.

  28. 28.

    Karel Kulhavy, Ronja mailing list, 2003-07-20.

  29. 29.

    Michal Elias, 2008-09-27.

  30. 30.

    Jakub Horky, 2009-01-17; Lada Myslik, 2008-01-09.

  31. 31.

    Jakub Sykora, 2008-11-27; Jiri Bohac, 2008-09-14.

  32. 32.

    Petr Simandl, 2008-10-27; Ondrej Zajicek 2008-12-14.

  33. 33.

    Carliss Baldwin, Eric von Hippel, and Christoph Hienerth. 2006. How user innovations become commercial products: A theoretical investigation and case study. Research Policy 35: 1291–1313; Eric von Hippel. 2005. Open source projects as user innovation networks. In Perspectives on free and open source software, ed. Joseph Feller, et al., 267–278. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  34. 34.

    For a critique along these lines, see Dominique Pestre. 2004. Thirty years of science studies: Knowledge, society and the political. History and Technology 20(4): 351–369.

  35. 35.

    Steve Woolgar. 1991. Configuring the user: The case of usability trials. In A sociology of monsters: Essays on power, technology and domination, ed. John Law, 57–102. London/New York: Routledge; Vololona Rabeharisoa, and Michel Callon. 2003. Research ‘in the wild’ and the shaping of new social identities. Technology in Society 25(2): 193–204.

  36. 36.

    Olga Amsterdamska. 1990. Surely you are joking, Monsieur Latour. Science, Technology & Human Values 15(4): 495–504; Johan Söderberg, and Adam Netzén. 2010. When all that is theory melts into (hot) air: Contrasts and parallels between actor network theory, autonomist Marxism, and open Marxism. Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization 10(2): 95–118.

  37. 37.

    This taxonomy of approaches in STS is proposed by Andrew Jamison, and Mikael Hård. 2003.The storylines of technological change: Innovation, construction and appropriation. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 15(1): 81–91.

  38. 38.

    Hence I have selected and delimited my case study in accordance with Bent Flyvbjerg’s qualified defense of this approach within the social sciences. Bent Flyvbjerg. 2006. Five misunderstandings about case-study research. Qualitative Inquiry 12(2): 219–245.

  39. 39.

    Christian Sandvig. 2004. An initial assessment of cooperative action in Wi-Fi networking. Telecommunications Policy 28(7–8): 579–602.

  40. 40.

    Pavel Klvač, et al. (ed.). 2007. Na tom našem dvoře. Prague: KSB.

  41. 41.

    Monika Glettler. 1982. The organization of the Czech Clubs in Vienna circa 1900: A national minority in an imperial capital. East Central Europe 9(1): 124–136.

  42. 42.

    Petr Seliger, 2008-10-21.

  43. 43.

    Karel Snajdrvint, 2008-12-14.

  44. 44.

    Jakub Sykora, 2008-11-27.

  45. 45.

    Petr Simandl, 2008-10-27.

  46. 46.

    Marcel Hecko, 2008-12-17.

  47. 47.

    Ondrej Tesar, 2008-10-05.

  48. 48.

    Karel Kulhavy, 2008-11-16.

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Interviews

  • Bohac, Jiri, contributed mechanical inventions for Ronja, user of Ronja (Prague, September 14, 2008)

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  • de Stigter, Johan, running a company selling wireless equipment, sponsor of Ronja (telephone interview, September 30, 2008)

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  • Elias, Michal, experimented with Ronja design, vendor and user of Ronja (Prague, September 27, 2008)

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  • Gullik, Webjorn, experimented with Ronja design (phone interview, August 10, 2008)

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  • Hecko, Marcel, developed PCB for Ronja, administrator of a nonprofit, wireless network, user of Ronja (Bratislava, December 17, 2008)

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  • Horky, Jakub, vendor of Ronja (Prague, January 17, 2009)

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  • Hudec, Jan, tested the first versions of Ronja (Prague, December 8, 2008)

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  • Kulhavy, Karel, main developer of Ronja (Zurich, November 16, 2008)

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Acknowledgements

 The case study in the Czech Republic was made possible, thanks to a grant which was awarded to me by .SE-stiftelsen. I also received financial support from Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés (LATTS) for finalizing the text. My gratitude is also extended to Marie Wenger and Liz Libbrecht who gave me important feedback. Finally, I want to express my appreciation for the people I met in the Czech wireless network scene.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Göteborgs Universitet, Göteborg, Sweden

    Johan Söderberg

  2. Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés/Institut Francilien Innovation et Société, Université Paris-Est, Paris, France

    Johan Söderberg

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  1. Johan Söderberg
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Correspondence to Johan Söderberg .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Korteweg-de Vries Institute for Mathematics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Gerard Alberts

  2. School of Innovation Sciences, History Department, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Ruth Oldenziel

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Söderberg, J. (2014). Users in the Dark: The Development of a User-Controlled Technology in the Czech Wireless Network Community. In: Alberts, G., Oldenziel, R. (eds) Hacking Europe. History of Computing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5493-8_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5493-8_10

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