ABSTRACT
The chapter studies the conceptual framework of the Wiring input/output board, a physical computing platform designed in 2003 by the Colombian engineer Hernando Barragán. Wiring, which can be regarded as a direct predecessor of the influential Arduino board, was designed as an interaction design prototyping tool that should allow non-engineers to program microcontrollers to create interactive designs using a wide range of sensors and actuators. The chapter recaps Barragán’s foundational experiences in Bogotá during the early 1990s, when neoliberal policies exposed Colombian society to the ambiguous possibilities of participating in the nascent culture of globalization, just as local artists experimented with newly available digital technologies. It also situates Barragán’s work in the lineage of innovative design theory developed in conversation between pedagogical settings like the Ulm School of design and designers traveling from and to Latin America. I analyze the forking of Arduino from Wiring as an example of the perils of assuming that open-source is an inherently democratic culture uninflected by global power asymmetries, and I argue for a theoretical understanding of physical computing as a response to Friedrich Kittler’s call to blur the boundaries between software and hardware.
