My name is Lynn.

I Valentina.

I'm a writer researcher.

I'm originally from till, um and based in rather than in their land.

Ah.

First, I would like to let you know a little bit about my background.

And so you know where I'm coming from.

Um, Well, I'm a feminist writer.

I was born in Chile, and in 2012 I moved to the UK to study at the University of Bristol and now the living brother.

Them where I'm a post graduate student in literary studies.

The topics off my research, our humanness literature, altered states of mind and the cyber space.

Ah, but to study all the stuff.

Ah, I needed money to afford this kind off l a test education.

So that's why I have been working since I was very young to get all sorts off gigs on scholarships.

And I've always been around technology and around the Internet.

I started us ah, Web developer in Santiago and then US project manager and in several advocacy organizations off digital rights in Teela and in Brazil.

After that, I joined the rights of collective.

I don't know if you know it.

Ihsaa a place where we provide secure communication channels such as encrypted email, encrypted file sharing, and were mostly oriented to activists all over the world.

This your knee Hassan being easy.

But I think that after all these years, have learned a thing or two about the Internet.

And at some point I became progressively more interested in its artistic literary possibilities and about how the Internet can become source for post humanist thinking rather than this worrying completely surveilled of space that we feel the Web is today.

Eso In 2018 I joined the Mozilla Foundation as an open Web fellow to study non Western, non conforming approaches to the digital technologies.

And from that experience emerge this the digital Witchcraft project, which right now it's, ah organization registered in the Netherlands under the name off the Digital Witchcraft Institute.

And while I'm extremely happy to be here with y'all 2% this experience off magic and technology, I'm super grateful that you invited me to this beautiful, beautiful place.

And I know this might not be the usual kind of topic you see in this tech conferences, especially because my output symbol, old techniques from humanities and social sciences, Um, such as interviews, fieldwork, critical discourse, analysis.

So I would like to invite you to look at this presentation with an artistically trillions ah, rather than something that's coming strictly from the realm of computer science.

So that's my future.

Disclaimer.

Who that started?

Um, well, digital witchcraft was one year it iss.

I want it started as a one year artistic research project with a strong connection to activism and notions off nontraditional Sze moats off thinking and everything started with this quote by Peter Slowed I hate is a very famous theorist on aesthetics.

Magic is the mother off technology.

Ah, this means that every technological advance started Assan idea that seemed like magic in the first place, like something supernatural on DDE.

I feel this kind of easy to confirm this premise for our generation, since we have experienced advanced in relation to digital technologies in a very fast way.

Ah, for example, picture your 10 year old self at speaking to Siri every morning to ask about the weather.

That's what I do almost every morning after living the K, you became kind, kind, obsessed with the weather.

So every morning I'm like Hey, Sarah, what's the weather today?

And Syria replies, and I take my decisions for the day.

According to Serious censor, My younger self will have freaked out, seeing that kind of thing, witnessing that kind of sorcery, and I took this quote.

Magic is the mother of tonality very seriously thought a lot about it and started to realize that the supernatural and the mystical references are all over digital technologies.

It's just such as magical references in software releases.

The other day someone told me that they're selling X distribution.

Cold sore, sir.

Source of, ah, also a ritualistic software exchange.

I don't know, Um, a maker space.

Ah, pirating party idea.

Self techno shamanism.

There's their stuff like that all over digital technologies.

So with their support off the Muscle Foundation, I traveled the world to see examples off this magic and technology intersection and to see if those cases could tell us new insights for the technologies off the future.

Also, that's the address off my for you did a witchcraft that works.

Um, yeah.

So for this presentation, I selected the following cases.

Ah, this one was my first exploration to this topic.

It's about hackers and chairman since you see in this light.

Ah, this was that comparative analysis between the figure off the hacker and the shaman, and they started to main text the book Shamanism by a Musalia.

He's one of the most famous colors on religious studies and coding freedom that sounded geography.

Young hacker communities rhythm By Bella Coleman.

Through the study, I found several similarities between the two groups, to name a few.

There's the use of masks by Chairman's.

Well, the relation to death.

It was something that I I always I found very.

It was very incoherent between the two communities that had the shamans and the hackers.

The first, um, paragraph is, um is that description long?

How Chairman's face death?

They believe that and you need to confront to death in order to came back stronger and with the answers you were looking for.

And after that is the paragraph of Hacker describing our listeners installation, confrontation to death.

He cause a larval stage of hacking and describe.

So the issues like how the he neglects activities such as food, sleep, personal hat, personal hygiene, E um, and it felt very near death experience in order to return with the knowledge you were aspiring to.

Um And this thing is a video idea that presented this on Hope conference in New York City.

Happier, some planet Earth.

And this is kind of a lab of fashion, manic ritual.

And the hacking conference.

The rituals are very important to both communities.

Many weekend.

Look, this weekend, you can picture yourselves work.

We have computers, some sort of champions movie.

I don't know.

I always feel like the sound of the drum and some of the typing in our words, right kind of experience.

Well, this is one of the most, but I also have all their case.

Um, this, for example, is something I always highlight.

It's about, um, a research trip I did at Havana, Cuba.

I started street networks in court.

Mm ah, there.

Because off the U.

S.

Embargo, among other reasons, the access to internet is very slow and very limited.

So the government and many autonomous providers build WiFi networks in selected spots off the city so people can connect.

And I was able to connect the situation with the Centauri.

Our practices in Santa Maria, this religion they have in core AFIS cation is at the center.

It's a syncretic religion because it has to disguise.

Ah drew our beliefs with Christian imaginary, and I realized that over goo eyes in us on a connected nation, they're very resourceful, and their computer scientists have been able to circumvent all the political limitations to gun activity.

Just like Santa Iria in the picture, there's a women at midnight in Havana connected to a street network.

Um, that's a weird thing to say in Latin America.

You can not go to the squared we at midnight with your cell phone.

You'll get robbed.

But you can do leading in court.

And you see, like this small rituals at night with all this blue hues in people's faces.

Um, I found it very ritualistic, too.

Ah, this worse.

This is certainly one of the cases that moves me the most is an android I met at the Core Idea Temple in Kyoto last year.

These android teachers Buddhist lessons, especially around the concept off emptiness, which in Buddhism is a door to a liberation since you'll get rid off everything.

Ah, to me was very important because it opened the possibility off us cyborg spirituality.

What's really cool To talk with the monks Really?

Old monks and see that they were taking the android very seriously.

Wasn't like, uh um a soulless machines speaking stuff they considered the this enjoy that value.

The speaker to them We humans on machines.

Ah, are capable off emptiness.

And I found it very beautiful.

If you go to talk, you go see the century.

Um, this is the most recent case I started.

It's about Jim or genies like Rowing William Jeannie.

Well, of course, the origin of Genesis, not Disney.

These jeans are a supernatural myth from the Arabic world and that, and that's a frame off.

One of my favorite films are Arabian Night by Paolo Pasolini.

The main idea around jeans ISS that they're beings that live between the human and the other worldly dimension.

They can be in both worlds, and I connected this idea with the notion off inter operability that free software promoters navigate.

For instance, I think it will be so cool to think about some deep interoperability.

What about poetry and computer science?

Ah, spirits and your phone.

Um, the belief ing in jeans is still very present in the Arabic world.

Um, for example, that there are forms.

Where?

Where you see that Ah, testimony itself.

Genes that supposedly took possession off computers and talk to you through some kind of chat.

Um, it's very appealing to think off us, period.

Taking position off your machines.

Maybe it has happened to you sometimes at some point in your life.

Ah, well, all of those were case studies.

But I had to do something with all this information because while I'm a researcher, I consider myself an activist too.

So it was tried to, um, to have my output reach something more impactful.

And my optimum was to promote on exercise off speculative design.

And this started at the Internet Freedom Festival last year in volunteer Espana, Spain, where with ah group of technologists and activist, we developed advanced technology prototypes and used a methodology where we have, like, um, magical powers who want side and community itself, our interest in the other, and and made connections between the two.

Like, Ah, what?

This what power is this community might need?

And with that, with that, with those crosses, we ve we rate for prototypes off advanced technology I did with this experience.

I did a film, a short film, Um, that WAAS screened in a couple of galleries.

Him brother, them and Amsterdam.

It's basically mean reading, um, reading a poem, plus several interviews I did around the world.

There's footage from my research trips, and there are the prototypes that we're saying.

It's also in this website if you want to watch it some day, Um, I have the collaboration off my friend Andres Stabia Hiss on industrial designer and he actually deciding the prototypes.

We moved from the stage off, having just on idea to have ah, material object.

Um, I like to share with you some bits of the short film.

It starts with this guy in the Amazon Go Store in San Francisco.

He tries to explain how the store works.

The yes, that is Esther with no where you don't use cash or any form of payment.

And it's weird because it's like it's It's supposed to be very smooth and easy, but everyone was super complicated trying to figure out how this work it felt really like one off this Internet of chair situation.

But he was security and and we started with this kind of in this situation that we're right Now we're in this in this in the technology is working like this.

Weird.

Um, I'd like to share with you the part that, um c'mon it he's on industrial designer from from Italy but he lives in Shanghai are sorry, but he lives in Chiang Kai.

He's in this design studio and Amy's automatic out a matter his super smart.

He I kind of had a crush on him.

He's super super smart and he was signs Look at him and he signs with this really post humanist a vision in mind where the human is not at the center.

So let's see what C'mon assays Hope this is going to sound.

What is it like?

Why should you feel something with border on how you do it?

So I think taking the time to be of the objects on other things is actually really interesting to look at the future because and this will be the problem I think we had with design and especially user centered design that only looks at the person has a center, but you sometimes lose the context.

So bye, if you think I'm a fool.

If you think about the future from the perspective of a Roomba or a cat or a river, What is it Andi think that's that's actually a lot more.

It's something that we definitely have to look at for now.

Like, how do you go beyond, I mean, in some ways some people talk about, Of course, that is like beyond you as a person in us, you know, whatever.

Like why male?

There is a hole like inclusion discussion.

But I think there is also like the whole like beyond human discussion, especially when you're talking about issues on technology and things that have agents in your life.

You also need to think about what is what is that thing doing.

What does it see?

There was a very beautiful work years ago from Martin, From used to be a Bird longer if he made the whole super cut off all point of views off Canada's and how you can See the world.

And so you start to see how you know all these different algorithms have different ways of determining what is water.

Sometimes it's vector.

Sometimes it's boxes, sometimes it's blobs.

But if you don't understand how this thing See, I have this thing, why they behave then it's really hard to even have the discussion around.

What's the problem with a guy?

What's the problem with ethics in technology?

Unless you also see and look from the other perspective?

What is this?

This is one off the prototypes.

The with this sign, it's some sort of ship.

Extremely appropriate.

Appropriate for migration.