Research
From the third world internet to many worlds.
We imagine an archipelagic internet and create the direction and tools needed to steer us there.
Today... We support research projects & archives.
+ Partnering with artists, technologists, and researchers for prototypes of social simulations of agents in Philippine contexts
+ Collectively, we historicize third world internet cultures through the Philippine Internet Archive.
Futures... In 2025, we're looking to start publishing Technology.ph, a journal on critical along with a Tropical Internet Reader. Later, when we acquire physical space, we'd like to host our Library of books.
Themes
Today, these broad problems direct much of our thinking and work. If these resonate with you as an independent practitioner or as an institution that might want to foster this work, consider reaching out.
We produce artifacts, experiments, and thinking that draw attention to, and determine alternative & better futures.
Archipelagic infrastructures
We need an internet that is decentralized and distributed, separate from its usage for domination and empire.
Our rich archipelago has many models of collective care and aid that we might draw from, from the community kitchen to the form of the archipelago itself.
Labor
From call centers, BPOs, data labeling, virtual assistants... what role do Filipinos play in technology, and how do our bodies serve as infrastructure?
Can we provide more equitable structures for our work that serves as the backbone for hardware and software services? How do we visibilize the Filipino body?
Performance & Power
The Philippines is a nation of performativity and power, from the stage of politics to startups to social class. Star power, fanatacism, and idolatry might be contested as we work to dismantle dynasties and populist exploitation. From colonial technologies like the aircon or karaoke to memetic phenomena, how do we unpack and contest these modes of control?
Gambling, POGOs, & Predation
POGOs have terrorized the landscape, leading to human trafficking & immense material violence. The all-in-one payments platform GCash serves gambling games in the same place you handle remittance. Crypto scams such as Axie Infinity prey on Filipinos.
Addiction is scarring the Filipino digital landscape. What can we do to improve policy and work against these tools?
Faith as & with Technology
Engaging with how technology may mediate belief, especially through the lens of Filipino Catholicism.
Furthermore, tracing the computational roots behind the rituals and objects we use as mediums towards the divine.
AI Safety & Alignment
Machine learning has been present in practical use since the 90s, and is rapidly accelerating, yet is continuously mystified. As these systems are put into wider use, we work against AI exceptionalism and unchecked progress to more carefully align these systems to human values and ethics, especially those values from the third world.
Intelligences & Co-creation
Expanding our views of intelligence and agency beyond the human, working beyond human scales and perspectives.
Can animist perspectives and Filipino mythologies help us promote these perspectives towards the planetary?
Research
Technologists & artists looking to spend time experimenting or prototyping new work around Filipino arts and technology, producing public programming thereafter.
We are especially interested in those looking to investigate our themes of interest, creating experimental tools and critical texts.
Coming soon...
How do you begin to draw the impossible line between the Filipino and the technology they're enclosed around?
Technology.ph will be an open-access digital journal that presents and produces critical and experimental writing on archipelagic technologies and the arts.
Technology.ph
We're currently looking for an Editor to help lead the publication, and are open to pitches... let us know.