Sheila drops in unexpectedly. “Damn it,” she yells before even saying hello, “my laptop crashed again, Tïuri!” “Of course,” I say, “it is almost twenty years old now. I don’t know how much longer I will still be able to stretch the lifespan. Why don’t you opt for something else for a change? Look, it was only this week that I worked on a …” “I like using laptops,” she interrupts. “They still give me the most freedom to work. It so happens I am used to them.”
Sheila is a grey hat hacker. She worked at a large bank for a long time, and for several tech companies after that, but she kept getting fired because she didn’t obey their instructions. “For ethical reasons,” she says. Now, she tries to make money with assignments directed against these large companies. She is like a cyber Robin Hood, profiting from corporations that profit from us.
She is good at hacking, but she needs me for hardware. That is my ‘pet subject.’ I used to be a famous cyber artist. I reused technology, creating my own installations with it and programs for it. My works were mostly socially critical, but there is no interest in them anymore. However, it has given me a lot of experience in putting old technology back together. Today, I work with weekly contracts in technological waste disposal. There, I find the gems among old parts that are useable. It is a useful talent, having a good nose for valuable waste.
They also know this at iFoon Ghent, the local cooperative that reworks old technologies into new, useable devices. They were pioneers: it became one of the few booming businesses in the decaying economy. New devices have become a rarity, but the market for repairing and reassembling existing devices is important. I sell parts that I find among the waste to the people of iFoon. This way, I get along better than most former artists. I use the parts I cannot sell for my own smart devices. For example, I made a device that can translate in real time for my colleagues at the waste disposal, who are often climate refugees that don’t speak Dutch or English. It is simply an old smartphone with a microphone and speakers, and a program I created together with Sheila by combining old online translation programs. The translation is made based on suggestions from various translation apps and online dictionaries. Technology doesn’t have to be flashy and new to be useful.
