H-Sci-Med-Tech: New posted content
Baffoe-Bonnie on Murillo, 'Common Circuits: Hacking Alternative Technological Futures' [Review]
Murillo, Luis Felipe R.. Common Circuits: Hacking Alternative Technological Futures. : Stanford University Press, 2025. 207 pp. $26.00 (paper), ISBN 9781503641488.
Reviewed by
Marilyn S. Baffoe-Bonnie (University of Pennsylvania)
Published on
H-Sci-Med-Tech (January, 2026)
Commissioned by
Penelope K. Hardy (University of Wisconsin-La Crosse)
Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=62377
In Common Circuits: Hacking Alternative Technological Futures, Luis Felipe R. Murillo traverses international spaces to understand how place, community, and politics are created and navigated through the practice of hacking. Using case studies in Berkeley, California; Tokyo, Japan; and Shenzhen, China, Murillo’s analysis reveals that hacking is far from a narrow, malicious expression of criminality and rather a sociotechnical process conducted by hackers, who are technologists, and their peers who work in environments alternative to educational and corporate sectors and institutional spaces. The outputs of hacking are varied, ranging from noncommercial products, like universal remotes that can turn off any television, to commercial projects, such as wearable Bluetooth speakers. Central to the practice of hacking is commoning, which involves “creating, sharing, and sustaining technologies of common interest” (p. 2). While conviviality is central to hackerspaces, hackers and their spaces face challenges as they navigate social movements, social inequality, and the varying definitions of what it means to be a hacker, as well as the limits of openness in technology.
Murillo identifies three registers—specialization, personification, and politicization—that evidence the challenges of commoning that limit the ability of hackers to fully realize their targeted sociopolitical disruptions. Together, Murillo’s three registers chart how expertise is refined through technical mastery, embodied in hacker identity, and unevenly translated into claims about social transformation. Murillo explores these varying registers by first following Noisebridge and Mitch Altman. He embeds himself in the Silicon Valley technologist community by helping hackers as they develop various technological projects. Known initially for its open-door policy and single rule—to be excellent to others—Murillo explores what happens to these seemingly simple norms when both internal and external actors exert non-excellent force.
He then moves his analysis to Shenzhen, China, where the Chaihuo makerspace, rather than a hackerspace, given the negative connotations of the word hacker in China, similarly fosters a convivial atmosphere. Many Chaihuo members were influenced by Western hackerspaces, yet they navigate hacking in ways specific to China’s technological environment, shaped by reverse-engineering practices and aligned with corporate and commercial interests. The final case examines the Tokyo Hacker Space in the aftermath of the March 11, 2011, earthquake, which necessitated the implementation of radiation-monitoring activities. As mistrust in the government increased and access to radiation-tracking devices decreased, hackers turned their attention to device development and data collection.
Murillo identifies spatialization as “the register for understanding the contemporary politicization of computing expertise” (p. 156). Across the cases, he unpacks how hackerspaces become a place for exchange through the trading and circulation of expertise as gifts and favors. However, despite this conviviality of hacker and makerspaces, the process of gift giving was not without limits. For example, despite its conviviality in workshops, open tables, and common areas, Noisebridge members found themselves negotiating between openly helping others and welcoming newcomers, and willfully limiting the exchange of information on projects deemed proprietary. Murillo argues that, despite many hackerspaces’ anti-capitalist orientations, open technology in these spaces shifts iteratively between gifts and commodities, revealing the limits of what it means to be open.
Within each hackerspace, Murillo closely follows the trajectory of three members: Mitch Altman (United States), NalaGinrut (China), and Gniibe (Japan) to understand the process of personification—how each individual came to be a hacker. A core strength of the book is the closeness with which Murillo traces the journeys and personal narratives of each member, showing how early life experiences shape what it means to become a hacker and where the boundaries of the field are ultimately drawn. Across all three cases, hacking is not merely about tinkering but about how tinkering, changing, and developing are shaped by queer identity, anti-military funding, the search for community and belonging, the desire to educate future generations, and the cultivation of self-discipline and respect for persons.
Murillo ultimately argues that the spatialization and personification of hackerspaces together generate “the politicization of computing expertise at transnational scales” (p. 3). Indeed, as he demonstrates, the sociotechnical activities at Noisebridge, for example, serve as examples in governance and conviviality for other hackerspaces. Interestingly, the interpretation of these spaces by outside hackers as a utopia stands in contrast not only to the beliefs of founding hackerspace members, such as Altman, but also to the lived realities of hackers on the margins. Notably, there are cases in which members believe their hacking activities are apolitical. For example, in Tokyo, radiation data collection was not viewed as a political activity but rather as a means to democratize data without the explicit need for developing an interpretation of the data. Similarly, in Shenzhen, hacker NalaGinrut viewed his hacking not as an interest in politics but as a means of educating future generations. At Noisebridge, the ethos of horizontal governance and open doors initially fostered conviviality within the organization and among political movements, such as Occupy. However, it also led to unexpected challenges and the eventual deterioration of the space, technological objects, organization, and the sole value of being excellent.
Across cases, women and people of color find themselves marginalized in these spaces, whether through overtly gendered jokes by male hackers, experiences of sexual assault and anti-Blackness, or the precarity associated with undocumented status—harms that the spaces themselves fail to adequately address. While Murillo highlights the limits of hackerspaces in creating widespread conviviality, there are no direct accounts of those who experience what it means to be a hacker at the margins. For these individuals to be given a voice would have begun to reclaim what Murillo describes them as having lost and further showcase the limits of conviviality, as well as the fact that some hackers’ positionalities preclude them from appearing apolitical. Furthermore, they would provide direct evidence for an answer to the core question that Murillo raises throughout the book: “Common for ‘whom’? Common of what and under what historical circumstances?” (p. 158). However, Murillo provides the reader with resources with which to further understand some of these experiences, such as through the work of Sophie Toupin on feminist hackerspaces.[1] Through Common Circuits, Murillo offers a new lens and case studies to understand how hackers utilize their expertise to create new, more open sociotechnical worlds that challenge the traditional role of technologists in academia, corporate settings, and government spaces.
Note
[1]. Sophie Toupin, “Feminist Hackerspaces: The Synthesis of Feminist and Hacker Cultures,” Journal of Peer Production, no. 5 (2014), http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-5-shared-machine-shops/peer-reviewed-articles/feminist-hackerspaces-the-synthesis-of-feminist-and-hacker-cultures/.
Citation:
Marilyn S. Baffoe-Bonnie.
Review of
Murillo, Luis Felipe R..
Common Circuits: Hacking Alternative Technological Futures.
H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews.
January, 2026.
URL:
https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=62377
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
SPEAKER SERIES WEBINAR: Jane Thomas on Wilful Neglect [Announcement]
ON
Canada
HYBRID EVENT: Jane Thomas on Wilful Neglect: The Federal Response to Tuberculosis Among First Nations, 1867-1945
Drawing on the Department of Indian Affairs annual reports, memoranda, and budgets over more than seventy years, Wilful Neglect reveals how federal health policies, shaped without Indigenous input and rooted in colonial ideologies, allowed tuberculosis to devastate First Nations in Canada. This conversation will explore the lasting impact of these policies today and the urgent need to reckon with the legacy of systemic racism in Canada’s health systems.
This hybrid event will take place on 14 January at 7pm ET. For in-person attendance, the event will take place at 232 King St. N., Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. For online attendance please register at: https://studyofcanada.ca/event/wilful-neglect-the-federal-response-to-tuberculosis-among-first-nations-1867-1945/
Abstract Deadline for Injury Studies Workshop Extended to January 30
The abstract deadline for the Injury Studies Network spring workshop has been extended to January 30! Please use the hyperlink below to register for the workshop and to submit a proposal.
Workshop Registration Form: https://forms.gle/cDMh3YHwJyqyEfsy8
The event will take place over Zoom on Friday, March 13, and Saturday, March 14, from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM U.S. Eastern Time. The workshop will cover the research methods, ethics, teaching, and outreach of the new field of injury studies and is open to participants from all disciplines. For more information, please see the flyer attached to the original announcement or email Dr. Alex Parry at alexand...@urmc.rochester.edu.
CFP - gd:c Summer School 2026 - Worlds in the Lab (Munich, 20-24 July 2026) [Announcement]
Germany
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
WORLDS IN THE LAB
Experimental sites of dis:connectivity
—
gd:c Summer School 2026 organised by
Clemens Finkelstein - Susanne Quitmann - Aliena Guggenberger
—
Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Munich, Germany – 20–24 July 2026
Applications due: 1 March 2026
The Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect (gd:c) invites master's students and doctoral candidates in the humanities, as well as creative professionals at any career stage, to participate in a week-long summer school in Munich, Germany. There are no participation fees. Accommodation and travel expenses will be covered for all participants coming from outside Munich.
About gd:c / Summer School
gd:c examines the dynamic, co-constitutive relationship of global integration, absent connections, and disintegration in current and historical processes of globalisation. Central to this approach is the concept of dis:connectivity, which foregrounds how connections are actively made and unmade, interrupted, unevenly distributed, or strategically withheld, and how such dynamics shape the production of knowledge, power relations, and material environments across temporal and spatial scales.
The gd:c Summer School provides a platform for interdisciplinary exchange and transdisciplinary collaboration, bringing together international students, scholars, and creatives to engage deeply with a focused theme. For more information, please visit: globaldisconnect.org
gd:c Summer School 2026 - Theme
Worlds in the Lab explores laboratories as spaces where worlds—and their fragments—are reconfigured. These are experimental sites of dis:connectivity in which the ‘global’ is disassembled into analysable parts, imaginaries of planetary conditions fabricated, or alternative futures modelled, rehearsed, and resisted. Laboratories range from scientific observatories and sensor-equipped environments to landscapes, archives, exhibition spaces, cultural institutions, and art/design/film studios. Across these diverse settings, elements of the world are isolated, scaled, narrated, simulated, transformed, or imagined otherwise. Such experimental conditions open possibilities for new forms of inquiry and speculation; they also produce distortions and expose the limits, exclusions, and dis:connections that arise when complex environments are translated into manageable forms. Rather than treating laboratories as self-contained scientific spaces or metaphorical abstractions, the summer school approaches them as experimental infrastructures through which environments, ecologies, bodies, and planetary conditions are constantly re/made.
Building on recent scholarship in the environmental humanities, science and technology studies, the history of science, global history, media and visual studies, art/design/architectural theory, anthropology, and decolonial and Indigenous studies, the summer school explores how worlds-in-the-making emerge through laboratory practices such as modelling, prototyping, display, simulation, and field experimentation. It brings the laboratory—as a concept, practice, and space—into dialogue with the spatial, visual, and material cultures of world-making, including e.g., archives, lieu de mémoire, planetary analogues, atmospheric observatories, geoscientific proxies, environmental monitoring infrastructures, and exhibition architectures.
What happens when “the world” becomes a laboratory object, a test setting, a scenario, or a speculative prototype? How do laboratory sites mediate between global and local scales, between human and more-than-human realms, and between imagination and material constraints? What frictions, asymmetries, and disruptions may arise? Which affordances, knowledge, and opportunities can be drawn from these experimental sites of dis:connectivity?
Programme & Format
Worlds in the Lab is built around experimental pedagogical formats that front-line collaboration, situated learning, and creative inquiry. Participants are asked to bring their own research or artistic projects to the summer school to develop and interrogate them through collaborative experimentation. Over the course of the programme, participants engage in hands-on exercises, conceptual studios, and field excursions to Munich’s scientific, technological, and cultural laboratories—places where knowledge is produced, mediated, and contested.
Through these interdisciplinary encounters, we will collectively examine how laboratories function not only as controlled environments for experimentation but also as world-making devices. Blending critical reflection with experimental practice, the summer school fosters a shared space of inquiry in which participants can question existing research conventions, explore new methodological repertoires, and co-develop approaches that speak across disciplines, media, and modes of knowledge production.
A faculty of international scholars, designers, and artists will guide the sessions by offering conceptual provocations, leading site-based activities, and supporting participants’ work throughout the week. Participants share their projects as works-in-progress, whether through short presentations, poster sessions, performative or speculative interventions, material or visual experiments, or brief media-based formats that meaningfully integrate into the summer school’s experimental environment.
Possible Approaches
Projects should probe the core question of Worlds in the Lab: how do laboratories—across sciences, technology, arts, and humanities—construct the worlds they aim to study as experimental sites of dis:connectivity? We invite participants to consider the laboratory not only as a site of experimentation but also as an epistemic fiction, a method, a performance, a metaphor, a design space, and a political technology. Projects may explore how laboratories assemble or simulate worlds, how they facilitate or constrain speculation, and how they unsettle boundaries between object and environment, model and reality, or human and more-than-human.
We welcome proposals from any field that critically engages with laboratory practices—empirical, historical, conceptual, artistic, or speculative—not only to show what laboratories have been but to test what they might yet become. The summer school will operate as a meta-laboratory, a space for collective experimentation with the boundaries and futures of laboratory thinking across the humanities, arts, and environmental research. This may include:
(1) artistic and curatorial practices that treat the laboratory as a world-making device, such as Arts at CERN, where artists probe the spaces between matter and meaning; Black Quantum Futurism, whose temporal laboratories reconfigure lived histories and possible futures; or Forensic Architecture, who reconstruct environments as investigative and evidentiary worlds;
(2) humanities-based experimental initiatives that engage the laboratory as a site of narrative, visual, and conceptual intervention, such as historical re-enactment, experimental literary practices, or sensory and experimental archaeology (including reconstructions of past soundscapes, smellscapes, and material environments), Donna Haraway’s speculative fabulation practices, Anna Tsing’s worlding experiments, or the media laboratories of the Harun Farocki Institute;
(3) historical, theoretical, and digital engagements with ecological, technological, or scientific infrastructures as world-making laboratories, such as glaciological research stations that stage the cryosphere as experimental terrain; quantum-technology labs where new sensing paradigms redefine the limits of environmental detection; machine-learning platforms such as Google’s AlphaEarth, which construct computational Earths through predictive modelling;
(4) decolonial and community-based approaches that foreground plural epistemologies and contest the politics of experimental space-making, such as the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR), which develops feminist and anti-colonial protocols for community-led scientific practice; the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), which builds activist infrastructures for monitoring environmental data and political accountability; or the Center for Native Futures, which advances Indigenous world-making through art, relational knowledge, and speculative design.
Application Materials
Please send the following documents (in order), compiled into a single PDF file titled YOURLASTNAME_gdc-summer-2026.pdf, by 1 March 2026 (23:59 CET) to clemens.finkelstein[at]lmu.de:
- Cover Letter (max. 300 words) detailing your disciplinary background, your motivation for participating, and how your current research or artistic practice relates to the frameworks of the gd:c Summer School 2026.
- Project Proposal (max. 500 words) describing the research or artistic project you wish to further develop through your participation and the format in which you envision presenting it during the Summer School programme.
- CV (max. 2 pages) or Artistic Portfolio (max. 5 pages, or links to other media).
We particularly encourage applications from individuals and regions that are underrepresented or marginalized in global academic/artistic discourses. If relevant in your case, please mention this in your Cover Letter.
Dr. Clemens Finkelstein
Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
The 