Podcast Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network – New Books in Anthropology
Host: Liliana Gill
Guest: Dr. Luis Felipe Murillo, author of Common Circuits: Hacking Alternative Technological Futures (Stanford UP, 2025)
Date: December 17, 2025

In this episode, Dr. Luis Felipe Murillo discusses his new book which explores the world of hackerspaces and the broader circuits—technological, social, and political—that connect them across different global contexts. The conversation traverses themes of technopolitics, the shifting meanings of "hacking", methodological approaches to studying global tech communities, cultural variations between hacker communities in the US, Japan, and China, and the persistent challenges of inclusion and access.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Origins and Scope of Common Circuits

[02:28–08:31]

• The book arises from Murillo’s prior work observing technopolitical projects in Brazil, especially the intersections of social movements and free/open-source technologies in the late 1990s.
• "Common circuits" refers to transnational spaces of exchange that link local technopolitical projects, such as hackerspaces, open-source software for privacy, and DIY science instrumentation.
• Hackerspaces are described as community labs where individuals collectively experiment with, learn, and teach information technologies—ranging from privacy protection to open hardware.
• The book focuses on hacker communities in the Pacific Rim: San Francisco (US), China, and Japan, highlighting the circulation of people, technology, and ideas between them.

“Hackerspaces is one of the instantiations of common circuits… articulated in the sense that you have the circulation of people and projects and symbols even across these different locations.”
—Luis Felipe Murillo [03:48]

2. The Many Faces of Hacking

[08:31–13:11]

• The concept of "hacking" has become diffusely applied, ranging from potato chip marketing to body modification, to startup culture.
• Murillo is particularly interested in the politicization of hacking: how technical expertise is turned towards political purposes, differing greatly by context.
• He explores two under-developed dimensions in the literature:
  • The spatialization of hacking: How physical spaces like hackerspaces bring practices together.
  • The personification of hacking: How individuals come to see themselves as "hackers".
• The book asks whether experiments in collectivist hacking are prefiguring a new technopolitics, and what that might look like.

“The book has this narrative arc where I explore the spatialization of hacking... but also the personification of hacking, how people become hackers.”
—Luis Felipe Murillo [11:40]

3. Hacking Across Cultures: US, Japan, China

[13:11–19:09]

• While global circuits connect hacker communities, cultural/political contexts create stark differences in how hacking is practiced and understood.
• San Francisco/Noisebridge: Organized in opposition to startup culture, with influence from anarchism and social movements. Known for participation in projects like the Tor network (internet privacy and anonymity).
• Japan: Hackerspaces resemble computer hobby clubs, but after the Fukushima disaster (2011), they used DIY ethos and tools (e.g., Arduino microcontrollers) to create community-distributed Geiger counters for radiation monitoring.
• China: Young technologists form small companies to participate in global open hardware circuits; the context and motivations are different from those in the US or Japan.

“You see in the book that the formation of the hacker spaces and the possibilities for cultivating hacking expertise (are) very different across context.”
—Luis Felipe Murillo [13:32]

“All of a sudden, you have this influx of people... they just get an ordinary microcontroller platform... and they put together this box... a recreation of a Geiger counter that is used to measure the level of exposure to harmful radiation.”
—Luis Felipe Murillo, on post-Fukushima Japan [16:53]

4. Methodology: Multilocal Ethnography and "Commoning"

[20:33–32:07]

• Murillo discusses using multi-sited ethnography (following networks rather than comparing isolated sites), arguing it’s not mere comparison but a study of what circulatory networks enable.
• "Commoning" is both a research method and an ethos—actively participating in and contributing to tech communities rather than observing passively.
• Challenges: Funding, visas, time, and access—access often comes through active participation, which also reflects the ethos of these tech communities.

“Multi-sited research is not comparative research... it is a study of what happens when a common circuitry is created across these sites.”
—Luis Felipe Murillo [25:24]

“If you come as a more isolated researcher... it becomes much harder for you to actually understand the experience of participating in this common circuit.”
—Luis Felipe Murillo [22:46]

5. Inclusion and Radical Openness—Ideals vs. Reality

[32:07–37:08]

• While hackerspaces and related communities often tout openness and inclusivity, in practice, barriers related to gender, class, nationality, and more persist.
• Openness is true to an extent, but participation is shaped by implicit forms of exclusion and discrimination that replicate broader power structures.
• Murillo highlights the need for critical research to not just reproduce community discourse but to honestly address and map the frictions and failures of inclusion.

“There is, this is at the same time true and not true... there’s a level of openness... but at the same time, there are really difficult symbolic barriers across nationality, ethnicity, gender, class, race...”
—Luis Felipe Murillo [33:30]

“One question that I ask is: it’s common for whom, under what conditions? That’s a key question that I pursued.”
—Luis Felipe Murillo [34:49]

6. Looking Forward: New Projects

[37:08–41:17]

• Murillo is developing an edited volume titled Political Software, which catalogs both historical and contemporary software explicitly linked to social movements worldwide.
• The project aims to reclaim the political roots of digital platforms, often overshadowed by later commercialization.
• The volume will be open-access and seeks both academic and non-academic contributors—a participatory, accessible approach aligned with the ethos of hackerspaces.

“…we’re trying to create this atlas of political software projects. This is something that is coming up… it’s a real pleasure, it’s like a lot of people are not academics, so we’re writing something that is super accessible and it’s going to be open access…”
—Luis Felipe Murillo [40:06]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Hacking became everything under the sun, right?... I remember a colleague sent me a photo… selling chips… and they had like, ‘oh, hacking this and that.’ …to sell chips! Like, people are using the concept of hacking.”
  —Luis Felipe Murillo [09:32]

• “Noisebridge was running one of the most powerful servers to support [the Tor] network for quite a bit of time.”
  —Luis Felipe Murillo [15:14]

• “I became a professional visa applicant. So if you need advice on applying for visas for any part of the world, I can fill out these applications with my eyes closed.”
  —Luis Felipe Murillo [27:57]

• “Our responsibility as researchers is not just to say, ‘oh, this is an open community, everyone is welcome’ and buy the discourse, but actually understand and explain how things actually happen.”
  —Luis Felipe Murillo [35:22]

Timestamps for Major Segments

• [02:28] What are hackerspaces? Origins and motivation for the book.
• [08:31] On the evolving (and diluted) meaning of hacking; focus on anti-capitalist and politicized hacking.
• [13:22] Cultural contrasts: Hacking practices in the US, Japan, and China.
• [16:38] The post-Fukushima DIY Geiger counter project in Japan.
• [20:33] Discussion of multi-sited ethnography and methodological innovation.
• [32:07] Inclusion, barriers, and the reality of “radical openness.”
• [37:24] Upcoming project: Political Software open-access atlas.

Conclusion

This episode offers a rich, critical, and personal tour of hacking as both a technical practice and a space for imagining alterative technological futures. Via in-depth ethnographic work across continents and cultures, Murillo unpacks the complexities of digital "commoning", the multi-faceted world of hackerspaces, and the ongoing struggles—and promises—of fostering inclusion and politicized cooperation in technical communities. Listeners come away with a deeper sense of both the transformative potential and the persistent contradictions of global alternative tech cultures.