Collective Infrastructural Speculations: A Situated Understanding of Pasts, Presents & Futures of Resilient Community Networks.

Bagalkot, Naveen and Shinde, Siddhant and Verdezoto, Nervo and Manuel, Ganief and Ramakka, Muni and Iitumba, Ndinelao and Ortega, Deysi and Dinesh, TB and Densmore, Melissa (2024) Collective Infrastructural Speculations: A Situated Understanding of Pasts, Presents & Futures of Resilient Community Networks., Proceedings of Participatory Design Conference 2024, 11-16 August 2024, Sibu, Sarawak, Malaysia, PDC '24, 1, 159-172, Association for Computing Machinery.

Text pdc2024-bagalkot-collective.pdf - Published Version Download (412kB)

Abstract

Community Networks (CNs) offer a means for high-quality communication infrastructure growth, especially in rural areas providing benefits to social and economic development; CNs hold potential to be community-owned infrastructure fostering community resilience. Towards realizing this potential of CNs, we explored two research questions: What does resilience mean for the communities who build, maintain, and use a CN; and what are community-based visions for fostering resilience and sustainability of their CNs? We carried out four speculative design workshops with different stakeholders at two CNs: Ocean View Community's CN in South Africa and the Channapatna Health Library's CN in India. We report our findings as two design fictions that emerged as collaborative articulation of our collective visions, acting as ‘Infrastructural Speculations’ nuancing our understanding of resilience in CNs. We offer insights into how speculative design could become a part of ongoing, situated participatory design and infrastructuring work.

Item Type:	Conference paper
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Community Networks, Global South, Infrastructural Speculations, Participatory Speculative Design
Subjects:	Networks > Network properties > Network manageability Human-centered computing > Human computer interaction (HCI) Human-centered computing > Interaction design > Interaction design process and methods > Participatory design
Alternate Locations:	https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3666094.3666111
Date Deposited:	17 Oct 2025 06:29
Last Modified:	17 Oct 2025 06:29
URI:	https://pubs.cs.uct.ac.za/id/eprint/1770

Actions (login required)

View Item