What is MetaReciclagem?

A group of people with a common aim. A collaborative methodology. A social technology project.

All these descriptions were given by participants of MetaReciclagem’s actions and mailing list. If there are many possible ways of seeing it, let’s start by its name.

“Reciclagem” means “Recycling” in Portuguese, which basically describes the group’s main activity: to recycle old computers. “Meta” comes from “Metáfora”, “Metaphor”. So what does the title mean?

Projeto Metáfora (Metaphor Project) was a mailing list created to discuss new technology in everyday life. It lasted 16 months and ended in 2003, but its impact and results – one of them is MetaReciclagem – are still around. That’s what Miguel Caetano, a Portuguese journalist from Lisbon, has been trying to analyse. He’s writing his M.A. thesis on Metáfora. And in order to understand how it all began, it is helpful to have some background on the original project.

Projeto Metáfora

The mailing list Projeto Metáfora was created in June 28th, 2002, in Brazil. In less than three months, there were a dozen projects in areas such as education, art and media, from a series of public interventions to discussions of (what turned out to be) the Brazilian tactical media lab, MidiaTaticaBrasil. Felipe Fonseca, one of its members, describes it as a free incubator for collaborative projects. 

All those projects followed a few principles, notes Felipe: 

-	They emphasized the idea of collaborative development, inspired by the free software movement. By publishing the knowledge created during the process, it would be easier to replicate the projects; therefore, they were all based on copyleft and free knowledge concepts;
-	A different perspective from other projects that deal with technology. We did not want to train people to become accustomed to computers, but transform technology to transform their lives;
-	An effort to keep the conversation free from computer jargons, so that anyone could understand, and open to anyone willing to participate (subscriptions to the list were unrestricted). There was also a concern to fight notions that technology is something apart from everyday life and that online and offline activities are opposite. 

“I never subscribed to the list because the number of messages sent everyday was so huge that I thought I wouldn’t be able to digest it all”, says Miguel Caetano. By the time Metáfora was created, he worked as technology journalist for an online publication in Portugal and started watching the list closely. “I was regularly following the creation of new subprojects.” 

Caetano then decided to write about the project he considers to be at “the cutting edge of cyberculture, the most advanced project in the technology-artistic vanguard”. “And in Portuguese language.”

A technical project

All projects discussed by Metáfora dealt with a new way to use technology. Felipe explains that MetaReciclagem was born to provide the physical infrastructure to some of them.

“In a given point, we realized we would need computers to get those projects running. Someone sent the group a link to accr.org website, an American organization that delivers used computers to NGOs. A member suggested we ask for donations. Other pointed out that transportation would be too expensive, and a lot of Brazilian companies and people also had old computers. What if we asked them? We were not an organization, how could we formally justify and process the donations? A draft of what we then called MetaReciclagem was created on our wiki site.

Who was the author? Everyone, I guess. Then I met Agente Cidadão, a NGO working with what they call ‘Social Logistics’: they pick up donations all around São Paulo and deliver them to charities. At that point, they had some computers and didn't know what to do with them. I talked about our project and in less than one month we started working together. They offered us exactly what we needed – space, old computers, internet access and energy, but, furthermore, the most important: a goal. We would transform technology using free software to help people in need.”

To restore computers which are broken or considered obsolete, put them running Linux and donate the machines to social organizations: that was the basic idea. The choice for free software is not only political: it’s based on hardware demand – most donated machines have low processing power and need “lighter” software – and protects the group from being accused of software piracy. Hernani Dimantas, other active member of Metáfora, emphasizes that MetaReciclagem is probably the first project which “came from of the internet and became real”.
 
Searching for definition

If it is such a pragmatic project, with purpose and methodology, why is there such a diversity of definitions?

Felipe emphasizes that there isn’t a particular group called MetaReciclagem. “We are not MetaReciclagem, we do MetaReciclagem. We use (the title) only to identify some of our actions.” It is a decentralized movement, without hierarchy. 

“It’s a pirate operation”, says Hernani. “People get together when they want to, and use MetaReciclagem as a form of expression. That’s why the voluntary side of our work is so big. The connection between us follows the logic of our individual projects.” 

In a group formed by people with such distinct backgrounds and interests, participation is also variable. Since people involved in the actions are not usually paid to do so – they generally work on other projects with governments or NGOs not necessarily connected to MetaReciclagem’s work. To Dalton Martins, this is the reason why they can be called a movement, and not an institution.

There are disadvantages. Despite the relative success of its actions, many of them are partnerships with government or NGOs. Although MetaReciclagem’s tactic is to keep an open dialogue with them – instead of facing big companies, for instance – to depend on other organizations and politicians (and therefore on their agendas) does not give the actions the necessary stability to grow and produce. 

MetaReciclagem is…

If there are many voices inside MetaReciclagem, then there are many ways to describe it. Some of them were presented at a recent group meeting:
 
“MetaReciclagem is a project that tries (and miraculously achieves) to make computers that were considered obsolete work with free software, and to introduce people in need to the idea of digital inclusion. To me, it’s also a chance to learn and teach others how free software works.”

“It’s construction of technologic independence to political and social actions” 

“Garbage is only garbage because it’s in the wrong place. Things at their right places have value. To some, it’s nothing, to others… it’s an inversion of values.”

“It’s a great school, a place to look for help, where we can create.”

“To recycle ideas, minds and hearts. To raise blue flowers in dry land.”

“It’s a family with freedom of expression; although it is work, there is autonomy to come and go.”

“It’s a collaborative methodology of technologic re-appropriation to social transformation.”

Digital inclusion?

Hernani notes that, although MetaReciclagem was supposed to be a pragmatic project of computer recycling from start, people started developing their own theories in time. That’s when it stopped being merely technical and showed a social aspect. What people involved in these actions think of them, however, changes. And this difference in points of view turns the project even more interesting.

To Hernani, the group’s work is characteristic of a “third phase” of digital inclusion. To restore computers and pass this ability to others is more than what other “digital inclusion actions” are doing right now, he observes: to simply provide access to the internet and access to information was something done at the first stages of the movement. What MetaReciclagem does is provide people with means to produce their own knowledge and encourage this process.

Felipe, for instance, disagrees with the vision that MetaReciclagem’s actions can classified as digital inclusion. Not that he’s against the movement for the right to universal access to computers connected to a network so people can interact. However, one could say this purpose is already being served by the electronic urn, he argues. “MetaReciclagem has a much deeper objective. We appropriate technology to provide a critical approach to the use of communication tools”; it’s not about “inclusion or exclusion”, but about “conscious, creative use” of computers and internet. “This is why we did not choose to open a number of telecenters, but to work on research and development of new ways.”

What about Metáfora?

Projeto Metáfora ended in October 2003. MetaReciclagem’s “spores”, however, keep spreading and growing in other cities. 

“Despite its force, vanguard and creativity, Metáfora was too ambitious. Its force was divided into various projects”, thinks Miguel Caetano, the Portuguese journalist. In his opinion, “its philosophy was too anarchic and utopian to establish a long term project”. MetaReciclagem, on the other hand, “is not as radical. It has a technologic and social approach, is well-structured and seems to be efficient”. 

But he hopes that, one day, the group involved in Metáfora may dedicate themselves to other projects. “I hope that, after working to establish MetaReciclagem, they would develop other projects created at the list, which are more related to cyberculture. Metáfora is an authentic storage space for great ideas yet to be explored.”