Cloning Computers SaC Ivan Marques

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Cloning Computers: From Rights ofPossession to Rights of Creation

IVAN DA COSTA MARQUES

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Introduction

Questions of originality and about the border between nature and artifice are linked to the

practices of international property rights and lie in the contact zone between the West and

its others. The notion of intellectual property is strongly connected with standard

epistemological assumptions, especially those pertaining to the existence of natural

stable borders and instant discoveries. The notion of natural stable borders allows for

the existence of pure, i.e. completely defined or unproblematic objects or things. The

concept of discovery suggests the detachment of a relative instant of time as the definite

moment of recognition or creation of a thing (a stable form).

The epistemological assumptions around notions of stable borders and discovery areassociated with the idea of the primacy of the origin, which invokes the precedence,

priority, predominance, preference, prerogative, privilege, right-of-way, seniority, supre-

macy of the original over the copy, of the model over the imitated. Primacy of the origin is

mobilized to legitimate granting intellectual property rights to those who first recognize

or invent a thing. Accordingly, by invoking institutionalized intellectual property rights,

agents can side-step claims of liberty or rights of creation through naturalized or invisible

processes of domination.

However, during the second half of the twentieth century, strong philosophical

movements, especially within French philosophy exemplified by the work of Foucault,

Deleuze, Guattari, and Derrida, have assembled powerful tools of deconstruction whichchallenge the primacy of notions of origin. Also, in the last decades, a stream of STS

(science, technology, and society studies) scholars working in the West, such as Madeleine

Akrich, Geoffrey Bowker, Michel Callon, Donna Haraway, Sheila Jasanoff, Bruno Latour,

John Law, Donald MacKenzie, Emily Martin, Annemarie Mol, Arie Rip, Susan Leigh

Star, Marilyn Strathern, Lucy Suchman, Sharon Traweek, and Helen Verran, among

others, have been translating, adapting and using philosophical tools linked to these

philosophical movements to show just how problematic borders and origins can be in

Science as Culture

Vol. 14, No. 2, 139160, June 2005

Correspondence Address: Ivan da Costa Marques, Ave. Atlantica 822 apt 402, Leme, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22010-000, Brazil. Email: [email protected]

0950 5431 P i =1470 1189 O li =05=020139 22 # 2005 T l & F i G L d


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the world of scientific and technological artefacts. Much of this STS work has been

identified with what has been called controversially actornetwork theory, also referred

to by the acronym ANT (see Law and Hassard, 1999).

The tension between construction and deconstruction of origins leads to the following

questions: in the context of the increasing investments in the framing of intellectualproperty, can postcolonial deconstructions of the Western concepts of discovery and

authorship be relied upon to challenge relations of dominance? Can those deconstructions

be relied upon to create new spaces of possibility for technological innovation under the

conditions of global inequality?

The Brazilian development of a clone of the Apple Macintosh computer speaks to

these questions in a variety of ways. Indeed, a consideration of the Brazilian reverse

engineering of the Apple Macintosh may transform the field of meanings in discussions

of technological innovation.

The Unitron Case

During the 1970s Brazil institutionalized a special policy of market protection for local

minicomputer manufacturers. In the 1980s, the Brazilian dictatorship extended this

policy to microcomputer market regulation.1 Through these policies, segments of the

domestic computer market were to be reserved for manufacturers who had development

laboratories in Brazil and who had locally designed their computer models. Prospective

computer manufacturers were required to present their local development projects,

schedules, and budgets to the Brazilian government, and have them approved before

they started operations. SEI (Secretaria Especial de Informatica) was the name of the

Brazilian government agency in charge of the computer industry policy in the 1980s. A

special court, called CONIN (Conselho Nacional de Informatica), was also instituted tohear appeals against SEIs decisions.

The Macintosh computer, the most important and successful alternative to the IBM PC,

was developed by the Apple Computer Company in the USA. In contrast to IBM, Apple

tried to enforce and maintain strict control over the property rights of its technology and

over the functional characteristics of its products. Indeed, Apple has a history of taking

aggressive legal measures to prevent the copying of its computers.

Figure 1. Mac da periferia. Credit: James Colburn

140 I. da Costa Marques


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This story of Unitron, a Sao Paulo-based company, begins with its development of a

Macintosh clone in November 1985. The first version of the product, labelled MAC

512, was nicknamed Mac of the periphery, in an allusion to its origin in a peripheral

country. As the nickname aptly suggests, this Brazilian production of an Apple clone

directly addresses the spaces of possibility for technological creation or innovation inconditions of contemporary globalization. These are the spaces which are increasingly

regulated by intellectual property rights.

There are two ways to produce clones: simply copying or, alternatively, reverse

engineering the original model. Through reverse engineering, it is possible to replicate

the functional features of a computer system without exactly copying it.2 The SEI

report on Unitrons bid to develop its clone of the Macintosh concluded that within

technical bounds the project complies with current legislation and we recommend its

approval.3 Moreover, according to a separate SEI report of November 1987 the software

part of the project should be approved as an indigenous development (category A).4

As of November 1987, according to the same SEI report, Apple had not filed any patent

relative to the Macintosh in Brazil, and would not be able to do so in virtue of the time

elapsed since the launching of the Macintosh in the market. After recommending

approval of Unitrons request to manufacture a clone of the Macintosh, the same report

concluded that Unitrons design would violate Apples rights in those countries in

which Apple had filed patents, although it did not violate Apples rights in Brazil.

In the meantime, political and commercial pressure from the United States had built up.

Unitron had made the external case of its clone an exact copy of Apples. Referring to this

feature of the cloned computer, Apple publicized that Unitron was a pirate enterprise by

placing two apparently identical machines side by side in a lobby on Capital Hill in

Washington: one was the original made by Apple and the other was a Unitron clone,

the latter adorned with a pirate flag.5 The US government became more directly involvedin the dispute in retaliation for the Brazilian decisions and it threatened to impose commer-

cial barriers on exports from Brazilian firms to the US.

On 18 December 1987, under heavy political and commercial pressure from the United

States, a new law regulating the software industry was passed in Brazil.6 On 22 January

1988, an addendum to the report on the software part of Unitrons project was drawn

up referring to this new juridical statute.7 According to this addendum, approval of

Unitrons project should be dependent on presentation of further information by

Unitron, and possibly further developments should be required.

From this point on, Unitron faced difficulties: on 27 January 1988 Unitron formally

requested that SEI approve its project, asserting that all formally requested informationhad been presented. On 15 March 1988 Unitron took legal action against SEI claiming

the right to have its project immediately approved. On 21 March 1988 SEI denied

Unitrons project approval based on Unitron having started commercialisation of the

product prior to final approval.8

But in spite of and possibly in contradiction with SEI expectations, Unitron did not

abandon its initiative. On 29 March 1988 Unitron filed for a new project to manufacture

a clone of a new Macintosh model, designated Unitron 1024. As of August 1988, Unitron

had changed both the external case and the internal characteristics in the new model of its

computer. After further interactions with governmental institutions, universities, and

National Semiconductors, Unitron claimed to have completed the design of a clone ofthe Macintosh using reverse-engineering techniques.

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Nevertheless, on 1 August 1988, SEI denied Unitron approval for the new model on

grounds of technical deficiencies.9 On 10 August 1988, Unitron appealed to CONIN

to have the SEI decision reviewed. In its appeal, Unitron claimed that its model 1024

could be legitimately approved in Brazil or in any other country, since it is the result

of an inestimable work of reverse engineering of the original American machine.10

Within a few months Unitron claimed to have made a new cloned machine avoiding

violations of the new juridical statute. Unitron asserted its legal right before CONIN,

against the SEI decision, to manufacture a clone of the Macintosh computer in Brazil.

Nevertheless, on 19 December 1988, CONIN turned down Unitrons project in a vote of

8 to 7. It is noteworthy, however, that representation on CONIN was heavily weighted

towards government interests. CONIN was composed of eight ministers of the federal gov-

ernment and eight independent representatives of civil society.11 All seven independent

representatives who were present voted for approval of Unitrons project.12 All ministers

voted against approval with the exception of the Minister of Aeronautics, who abstained.13

Geraldo Azevedo Antunes, the main Unitron shareholder, declared he would fight

CONINs decision in the courts,14 but he never did. Unitron closed.

Fiction or Fact? Who Chooses? Who Decides?

The Unitron story related above suggests that, at least in some cases, once a technological

frame of referencesuch as that of the Macintoshhas been circumscribed and fixed,

replicating the features of the relevant technology is feasible, even for products classified

as high technology such as computers. Inside a laboratory, it is possible to clone a given

computer at relatively low costs by replicating its functional characteristics within a well-

defined frame. But given the outcome of the Unitron case, can we still claim that cloning

foreign technologies (in Sao Paulo, Brazil) is feasible? Is it relatively easy to copy orreverse engineer without violation of rights? If so, why are successful instances of such

reverse engineering apparently so elusive?

Legal Reverse Engineering is Relatively Easy

I shall begin by making the argument that the reverse engineering of a high-tech product in

a given legal frame is indeed relatively easy, even though Unitron lost its appeal by 8 to 7

votes. I shall go beyond this to suggest this is due not simply to technical issues, but also,

and inseparably, for legal reasons. In his admirable study of what was involved in estab-

lishing and securing the patents of Schlumberger, Bowker contends that all a firm needs insuch cases is a respectful enough account (Bowker, 1994, p. 124). I will make a threefold

argument showing that Unitrons case provides evidence that a small firm with very

limited resources in a peripheral country was able to produce a respectful enough

account of its deeds to go to trial with. The three strands of my argument are outlined

in the following sections.

(A) A nuanced if bitter discussion proceeded from August to December 1988, when

CONIN came to a verdict about Unitrons claim to clone the Macintosh computer. In

1988, the computer industry policy was already under domestic criticism for alleged obso-

lete, high priced products, and for not having developed Brazilian firms that would be able

to export in the successful manner associated with Korean companies. Unitrons project,disentangled from its juridical appeals, might plausibly have turned into a golden



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opportunity for export. However, important private firms in the Brazilian PC market

feared eventual competition from Unitron, the lone company on the Macintosh market.

Taking a practical approach, they did not want to witness a (possible) striking success

for Unitron. So, in private, these firms did not hesitate to accuse Unitron of immoral

behaviour.Influenced by these larger local firms, and certainly eager to compromise over US

demands, high ranking government officials of SEI argued that Unitrons problem was

a moral and not [a] legal question, and that therefore the executive branch should act

to avoid further international embarrassment. In other words, Unitrons account was

respectful enough to bar larger Brazilian private capital investors from standing up in

public against it. They had to work from inside the business/government network toexert influence and make it easier for the pressure from the United States to become

effective.

(B) Mathias Machline was the owner of several firms, including SID, a computer man-

ufacturer that was among the five largest in the country. An SEI report in 1987 mentions

that Richard Herson was a consultant working for Apple.15 In December 1988, Geraldo

Azevedo Antunes, the founder of Unitron, told newspapers that Herson had selected

Mathias Machline as the prospective Apple partner in Brazil, noting that Herson had

been nominated to be vice-president of Mathias Machlines holding company.16 Hence,

Machline would have had something to lose if a third group (Unitron, for instance)

made a successful entry into the microcomputer market with a clone of the Macintosh.

Machline was also well-known as a friend of the president of Brazil, Jose Sarney. On

the eve of the CONIN meeting, the Minister of Science and Technology and CONINs

head, said that the Unitron 1024 machine is substantially different from the Macintosh

. . . all will depend on instructions to be received from Mr. Sarney.17 In other words,

the Brazilian government was not much concerned with a balanced evaluation of therespectfulness of the stories of the contenders, but rather with the satisfaction of discretely

manifested specific related interests.

(C) The independent representatives in CONIN thought that Unitrons claims should be

settled in the judiciary courts and not decided in CONIN, a court of appeal of the executive

branch of government. This was a sign that Unitron had produced a respectful enough

account of its deeds to go to trial with. An important figure among these representatives,

Claudio Mammana, the president of ABICOMP (Brazilian Computer Industry Associ-

ation), shared this view. He had had the opportunity to express ABICOMPs official

opinion in a meeting with the EIA (American Electronics Industry Association) in the

United States. On this occasion, Apples representative admitted that his company hadnot filed patents for the Macintosh in Brazil.18 On the day after CONINs decision,

Claudio Mammana declared that: although the question of United States pressure had

not been addressed directly by the government at the [CONIN] meeting, the correlation

between Section 301 of [the US] Trade Act and the Unitron issue is too close to be

overlooked.19 But ABICOMPs president was not a businessman. As a professor of the

University of Sao Paulo, he was a qualified employee who was respected for his intellec-

tual skills, but representatives of the local capitals associated in ABICOMP considered his

views to be theoretical.

Pressed by representatives of local capital, personal friends and the US government, and

advised to do so by high-ranking SEI officials, in all likelihood Sarney did influence thevotes of the ministers, who, with one abstention (the Minister of Aeronautics), voted



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consistently against Unitron. The unanimous vote of the independent representatives

present in the court for Unitron suggested that the legal account was creditable. Hence,

a respectful enough account was presented by Unitron. It appeared that reverse engi-

neering had been achieved and that copyright laws had not been violated.

Reverse Engineering was Barred from Outside of the Laboratory and the Courtroom

But if it is easy to copy or reverse engineer without violation of rights as I claim, then why

was success elusive for Unitron? The Unitron case suggests that the answer exceeds both

the technical and the legal framing on which this claim rests. The independent represen-

tatives in the court thought that the dispute should be settled in the fully independent

courts instead of in CONIN which was under the influence of the executive. Furthermore,

although it is difficult to prove, it is possible that Apple may not have been confident

that the Brazilian (or even non-Brazilian) courts would find in its favour, since it had

not registered its patents in Brazil. In any case, the fact is that Apple and Unitron never

faced each other in court. Apple never sued Unitron, instead it hired lobbyists. This

shifted the dispute between Apple and Unitron to outside of the courtroom.

In his history of Schlumberger, Bowker has suggested that in the world of corporate

disputes over ownership of the origin, strategies for imposing patents outside of the

courtroom involve all kinds of different uses for them (and sometimes workarounds for

being able to do without them) (Bowker, 1994, p. 113). Inside of the courtroom only

the veracity/respectability of history matters. The work of making a given story countas history is hidden. Outside of the courtroom, where the historical account is the

central focus, questions concerning the legitimacy of a given historical account become

irrelevant background noise to the real focus of company activity (Bowker, 1994, p. 113).

My contention is that in a matter of a few months Unitron was able to make the cloningof Apples products legal. In the laboratory it was able to re-organize the relevant

heterogeneous materials to separate unacceptable copying from acceptable reverse

engineering, and through the extension of the laboratory to include the law office, it

also made a respectful enough account of its actions. Technical framing intertwined

with legal framing. But this was not enough. Techno-legal framing overflowed into a

political and an economic space in forms such as conflict with the USA, competitors

in the PC market, friends of the president, moral but not legal questions. It was this

overflow that finally allowed Apple to bar Unitronfrom outside of the laboratory and

the courtroom.

Attendant Translations

The notion of translation is seminal to the stream of STS studies mentioned in the intro-

duction to this article. Indeed, the field may be referred to as the sociology of translation

(Callon, 1980). Latour calls translation the interpretation given by the fact-builders of

their interests and that of the people they enrol (Latour, 1987, p. 108).20

Opening the Black Boxes of Foreign Technology

During the 1970s a proposal to develop a computer technology in Brazil deflected thetraditional process of industrialization by import substitution that had been prevalent in



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Brazil (Tavares, 1972). In traditional import substitution policies, local industrial activities

are sought and successfully achieved using the factory, that is, the strict assemblage of pro-

ducts (and services). Innovation strategies revolving around import substitution policies

did not encompass local development and design of products and processes. The origin

of the technology was not an issue. Most import substitution policies, such as thatimplemented for the automobile industry in the 1950s in Brazil, took for granted that

the technology would be imported and did not address the conditions under which

import would occur.

In contrast with traditional import substitution policies, the minicomputer industry

policy adopted during the 1970s, which in part was conducive to Unitrons performance

and other related initiatives, had its focus on the local design and development of mini-

computer systems. The innovation strategy associated with the minicomputer industry

policy of the 1970s was partially grounded on the idea of granting the high status of scien-

tific research to the local activity of discovering the workings of foreign technologies

and learning how to reproduce them. The relative originality of this activity was recog-

nized by Brazilian computer professionals in the 1970s who claimed that discovering

the works of foreign technology should be considered legitimate work of original research

within a nation that did not know how to make the technological artefacts it uses. 21 The

effect of such attribution of status and meaning, a translation which turned commercially

available products into legitimate objects of scientific research, exceeded the confines of

the departments of linguistic and philosophy of the universities to become an important

factor in the financing of research in engineering departments in Brazil.

It was in the 1970s that governmental financial agencies started to provide funds for

graduate schools of engineering to undertake the reverse engineering of products of

foreign technology already available on the market. The decisions to allocate public

money to open the technological black boxes that were commercially available cametogether with a rhetoric which, in the 1970s, granted the high status of academic scientific

researchers to those who were researching such foreign technological black-boxes in uni-

versities. Traditionally such high status had been reserved for those who pursued the so-

called disinterested pursuit of knowledge, or for research oriented towards knowledge for

its own sake or concerned exclusively with the so-called advancement of human knowl-

edge about nature.22

From Factory to Nation in the Division of Labor

In the 1970s Brazilian computer professionals made use of a highlighted distinction thatwas embedded in the dominant discourse of the industrial engineering discipline,

namely, the distinction between the activities of industrial assemblage of goods (and

services) and what would more properly be called production (conception, design, fabri-

cation, circulation and use) of goods (and services). They used this distinction to empha-

size that, with the help of specific techniques in the organization of production, modern

industrial engineering makes it possible for a specially guided group of people to

perform the assemblage of industrially produced goods without expanding the context

of their activities and without actually knowing (discovering) how these goods are

made and created. In their journals and conferences of that period, computer professionals

pointed out that IBM and Burroughs were assembling the latest generation of computers inBrazil with nearly no involvement of Brazilian engineering.



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Although it was starting to lose its paradigmatic power, the Taylorist Fordist

separation of tasks of conception from tasks of execution in industrial engineering

was then (the early 1970s) still a dominant principle in labour and production organization.

Brazilian computer professionals created new meanings and effects around this separation,

translating it to the sphere and scale of the international division of labour. Braziliancomputer professionals in the 1970s claimed that the separation of conception from

execution reified an international division of labour which allocated the execution

(i.e. the task of assembling computers) to Brazilians, while reserving conception (i.e.

the tasks of discovering, inventing, constructing, creating, and organizing computers) to

the developed countries.

In the 1970s in Brazil computer professionals argued that development of local scien-

tific and technological knowledgethe tasks of discovering, inventing, constructing,

creating, and organizing computer systemswould produce better effects than imported

knowledge. For a time, this vision of locating and localizing technological knowledge

became most prominent among Brazilian computer professionals who rendered proble-

matic the dominant meanings of efficiency and not re-inventing the wheel which

granted legitimacy to the adoption of ready imported technology.23 Thus computer pro-

fessionals mobilized nationalist sentiments and partially deconstructed the universalism

associated with sciences and technologies imported from the developed world.

Lack of Science and TechnologyComparative Economic Disadvantage

In the 1970s Brazilian computer professionals attached new specific meanings to the

previously highlighted asymmetry of the international division of labour, arguing that:

(1) the lack of scientifictechnological knowledge of how products were conceived and

designed situated Brazil on the side of execution in the international division of labour;and (2) engagement on the side of execution resulted in comparative economic disadvan-

tage. This double construction of meaning translated lack of scientific technological

knowledge as the cause of the economic disadvantage in the context of the international

division of labour, which was also translated as the cause of poverty. This double

(indeed more complex) translation was illustrated by a short story repeatedly circulated

and discussed among Brazilian computer professionals in the 1970s.

The story of the Indian tells of a tribe who, dependent on hunting buffaloes to eat, had

adopted the rifle as a hunting tool, fascinated at first by the prospect of gaining the free

time that the rifle seemed to offer (since free time was associated with the promise of

the efficiency of modern technology). But having adopted the rifle for more than one gen-eration, the Indians had forgotten the techniques of the bows and arrows. Moreover, they

had taken no steps to discover how rifles and the bullets were made (since re-inventing the

wheel, they were told, would not be a good investment of their resources). Having

convinced the Indians, the white man could then increase the price of the rifle, demanding

in exchange for it more and more products from the tribe. In fact, the Indians were assem-

bling the rifles and even exporting them to the white man to pay for the rights to the

methods of fabrication (conception and design) of the rifle. Hundreds of Indians had to

work many months to barter and trade what they produced for something a few white

men took much less time to produce.

In short, this story enacted an economic explanation for the tribes trajectory fromabundance to misery. Such an account, like every statement within scientific discourse,



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would be true or false depending on what the others did with it (Latour, 1987). Yet, more

important than its veracity or falseness, were its truth effects. One such effect was that it

helped to elevate the status of the activity of researching into foreign computers that were

already commercially available but which Brazilian engineers did not know how to make

(conceive and design). The higher status of such activity helped to increase the funds fortechnological research in the computer engineering laboratories and graduate schools in

Brazilian universities.

A stock of prototypes required a channel to flow to the market. Computer professionals

at universities, state owned laboratories and military sites expected that firms would trans-

form prototypes produced in the laboratories into marketable industrial products. But there

were no Brazilian firms or foreign computer manufacturers that would run the risk of

adopting locally developed prototypes to complete their path to the market. That is,

they were unwilling to take the risk of completing the construction of locally developed

prototypes as technological products.

An alliance with the state was forged by computer professionals to catalyze and attract

entrepreneurs who would be willing to develop these technologies if they were protected

in the market from other entrepreneurs in possession of foreign technologies. This was the

basis for the industrial policy proposal made around 1975, which in 1977 resulted in a

minicomputer market protection policy adopted by a federal government agency

(CAPRE24), conceived and sketched out by a community of professionals that was not

composed primarily of businessmen, but rather of university professors and managers

of state-owned data processing bureaux (Dantas, 1988; Marques, 2003).

Translating into New Spaces

Unitrons case suggests new ways for the colonized to look at artefacts presented by thecolonizers. Here, rather than using these terms in their usual historically specific mean-

ings, I associate the words colonizer and colonized with an asymmetry in the processes

of construction of the so-called modern global world. In general terms, this asymmetry

allows for the (always provisional) identification of those who are seen as setting

the pace in the construction of the modern world as opposed to those who are perceived

as more willing or compelled to follow its rhythm, those who are taken to be active as

opposed to those who are taken to be passive, those who are taken to be dominant as

opposed to those who are taken to be dominated. In the way I perform it here the

tension colonizercolonized may be identified with many contemporary divides such

as the NorthSouth, the Europeannon European, the division between white people

and people of colour, or even the gender divide. In relation to modern science and tech-

nology, Portugal and Spainthe Iberian historical colonizers of Latin Americahave

only initially set the tone of the construction of the modern world (see Law, 1986) and

today can be as deeply entangled in the colonized space as their former colonies. The

relativity of the tension colonizer colonized is easily visible in certain regions of

Latin America, such as Sao Paulo.

The Work of Division and the Division of Labour: Constructing and

Deconstructing Boundaries

Asymmetries and tensions in the construction of modern technoscientific knowledgeemerge in the process of purification which has been well described in the ANT literature



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in general, and by Bruno Latour in particular.25 Traditionally, laboratories have been

perceived as spaces of purification, restricted places where purified objects (theories

and machines) are constructed. However, over the last few decades, ANT scholars have

highlighted that hybridization proliferates intensively in such settings. Indeed, hybridiz-

ation has never ceased to accompany purification. If one takes the standpoint that eventhe colonizers have never been modern, then it becomes apparent that there are no

pure beings, that all actions are mediated and that there are only provisional juxtapositions

of heterogeneous materials (Latour, 1993).

What is the effect of such conceptualization of the presence and permanence of

hybridization upon the perception of laboratories? One effect is the following: the

previously invisible work necessary to create stable borders and origins of objects

(purity as opposed to hybridization) becomes visible, and it is clear that it happens

outside of the laboratory. Alternatively, it becomes apparent that places previously

assumed to be outside of the laboratory are inside of it, or are, in fact, part of it. In

effect, the laboratory space expands into the spaces of many other institutions, incorpor-

ating NatureSociety in its entirety.

Through these insights, laboratories and courtrooms of the West emerge as places that

concentrate resources to carry out the work of division, classification, and purification in

the modern world. Laboratories and courtrooms create boundaries or frontiers between

purified objects and keep them stable. Western laboratories and courtrooms play a

crucial role in constructing and updating purification divisions sketched by the modern

colonizer, the boundaries between: Nature and Society, things in themselves and

men among themselves (Latour, 1993). Through cloning the colonized replicates the

functional features of a purified object by looking at it with their own eyes, capitalizing,

as Strathern says, on the fact that you can not tell by looking at a motor vehicle [or a com-

puter] whose it is, or the power it mobilizes (Strathern, 1999, p. 158).The boundaries between Apple and Unitron machines could not be conclusively estab-

lished once and for all as if there were stable differences. As in all contacts and contracts,

frontiers between designs of machines of different manufacturers cannot be specified to

their definitive and ultimate limits because these are moving borders. At any given

moment, these are the effect of the permanent movement of patent offices, referees,

lawyers, lobbyists, courts, engineers, chemicals, boxes, electrons, semiconductors, gov-

ernments, subcontractors, competitors and users. Breaching the boundary between

nature (the technical, machines in themselves) and society (the political, firms, govern-

ments, human collectives among themselves), Unitrons story suggests the making of

new institutional spaces of science and technology and justice and law.It would appear that Apple had not protected its rights in Brazil and Unitron had not

broken any Brazilian law with its clone of the Macintosh. The Brazilian government

was compelled to approve Unitrons project. But this was unacceptable for Apple and

for the US government. By the end of 1987, amid the disputes and controversies about

the Brazilian computer industry policy, something had to give. The software law in

Brazil seems to have been the weakest link in the network.

However, the new legal order, that is, the new legal statute or framing provided by the

new 1987 Software Law, did not push the cost of cloning the Macintosh computers high

enough to make Unitron give up its initiative. Unitron had re-evaluated the situation and

decided not to stop. Instead, it decided to abandon the 512 model and to add a law office toits laboratory. In this extended laboratory, Unitron had started to study/clone the Mac



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1024 (Apples next model), when its 512 model was turned down. The costs of cloning

undoubtedly had gone up for Unitron, who had to pay for new rounds of interaction

with government, universities and other contractors. However, the extended laboratory

allowed Unitron to appear confident before a court of appeal. As Bowker has argued in

the context of Schlumberger fighting for its patents, Unitrons account was respectableenough to go to trial with, and that was all that was needed in the courtroom (Bowker,

1994, p. 124; emphasis in the original). In a few months Unitrons new extended labora-

tory had remade the accounts: watching attentively the new framing, carefully deciding

what should be done based on the costs of development and reverse engineering.

Laboratory-factoryLaw-office-courtroom

Unitrons ability to perform amid this permanent movement suggests the creation of new

spaces of fact and machine construction in the colonized world. These are new spaces

created by the expansion of laboratories and law offices to include each other in a new

post-colonial world order: lab-factories attached to law-office-courtrooms. New trans-

lations for a new post-colonial world order suggested by Unitrons performance involve

the proposal that the colonized might see artefacts constructed in the extended

modern laboratories of the colonizers as if they were natural objects. This means that

initially the colonized would research these natural objects as such, and in so doing

integrate them into a previously unknown NatureSociety whole. In this domain of the

unknown, Nature and Society are not yet demarcated, but instead their boundaries are

constantly being provisionally established according to changing and contested criteria

of legitimacy. More specifically, in this new space suggested for the colonized by

Unitrons performance, hybridization is made explicit.

The first move towards the creation of this new space in the colonized world is theexplicit deconstruction and crossing of the borders between factories, laboratories, law

offices and courtrooms. A laboratorylaw-office-courtroom is created. Developments of

purification by the colonized in their laboratories become explicitly entangled with and

inseparable from developments of purification by the colonized in their law offices.

Decisions about what and how to purify are taken with explicit concern for those forms

that enhance the colonized vis-a-vis the colonizers: that is, decisions that better equip

situated agents or interests who or which oppose the primacy of the origin.

In this new space, the work of division, that is, the construction and stabilization of

origins and boundaries that define objects and subjects, would be made explicit taking

into account the local conditions of the colonized. Every technoscientific elementascientific fact, a technological artefact, a specialized profession, an academic discipline,

a modern citizenis part of an open network and extends itself over an intricate mesh

of present and absent patents, several colonizers technological border control policies,

import export balances, job opportunities, labour practices, and other changes. The

extended laboratory law-office space recognizes that all thisthis heterogeneous

networkconstitutes the technoscientific element and should be part of its assessment

when it is considered for incorporation into a machine or an agreement in the colonized

world.

The move to establish the extended laboratorylaw-office space is nothing more than

the late recognition by the colonized of how technoscientific elements are really madeor, in fact, constructed. While the always provisional form of a technoscientific element



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may be incorporated into the colonized world, its origins and borders which have been

constructed by the colonizers may be redefined, even radically redefined.26 It may even

be, if an optimistic trend is conceded, that such late recognition can redress some imbal-

ances in colonizer colonized relations and contribute to alleviate violence by transform-

ing them.27

Fidelity of Unexpected Allies

Bruno Latour uses the word actant to refer to technoscientific elements. I am focussing

specially on technoscientific artefacts as the unexpected allies [of fact builders or

colonizers]28 in the construction of the modern world. Latour (1987) describes how

these actants come to the aid of the colonizers in the work of division, helping them

constantly to reconstruct and keep stable the borders separating nature from society in

their version of reality. However, the fidelity of these actants is not natural or guaranteed.

The Unitron case shows that the fidelities of technoscientific artefacts are not spon-

taneously maintainedtechnoscientific artefacts are more or less easily diverted on the

frontiers. The unexpected allies of the colonizers are prone to be unveiled, modified

and cloned.

The fidelity of these actants is maintained and imposed through the work of division, the

construction of specific frontiers and links. Movements that alter links and cross frontiers

may be regarded as unacceptable copying and rejected, or, alternatively, they may be

seen as unavoidable (and socially beneficial) reverse engineering. Callon (1998, p. 18)

contends that the only absolute guarantee to prevent the possibility of reverse engineer-

ing is to abdicate commerce.29 Since the possibility of reverse engineering is insepar-

able from the exchange of goods and services, its possibility must be accepted in

negotiations concerning the work of division between colonizers and colonized if econ-omic transactions between them are to continue. One important dimension crucial to

the work of division is the naturalization of the mechanisms of attribution of authorship

and of the intellectual property rights that result from them. This analysis points to con-

cerns with investments in intellectual property framing and the mobilization of studies

of sciencetechnologysociety as resources with which to fight relations of colonizer

colonized dominance.

Ambivalence and Impasse in Facing Modernity

The ambivalence around simultaneously copying and rejecting the models they imitateoften brings those located in the contact zone between colonized and colonizers (such

as Brazilian computer professionals) into a kind of impasse. They simultaneously

imitate and are hostile to the models they imitate. They copy to the extent that they

accept the standards diffused by modernity. The Mackintosh cloners are involved in at

least two forms of rejection that affect non-Europeans when they approach modernity.

Chatterjee describes these rejections and observes that they are:

both of them ambivalent: rejection of the alien intruder and dominator who is never-

theless to be imitated and surpassed by his own standards; and rejection of the ances-

tral ways which are seen as obstacles to progress and yet also cherished as marks ofidentity (Chatterjee, 1993, p. 2).30



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However, although such rejections were certainly in play, Schwarz argues that since the

nineteenth century those who he calls the educated people of Brazil31 feel that they are

living among ideas and institutions that are copied from abroad and which do not reflect

local reality (Schwarz, 1987, pp. 3839). He indicates that, for this reason, they feel

inadequate. As members of the social category educated people of Brazil, livingbetween colonizers and colonized, Brazilian computer professionals in the 1970s expe-

rienced this inadequacy in various ways. Sometimes they submitted to it. However,

they also created prototypes, the design of which reflected the inadequacy of foreign

products for local conditions.32 In one way or another, then, Brazilian computer profes-

sionals translated inadequacy into technological dependence, and they tried to experiment

with it.

In this respect, the position of Brazilian computer professionals of the 1970s resonated

with the tradition of a well known cultural movement in Brazil, the modernist Oswald de

Andrades anthropophagous Pau-Brazil programme. According to Schwartz the:

anthropophagous Pau-Brazil programme sought to give a triumphalist interpret-

ation of Brazils distance from modernity, with the disharmony between bourgeois

models and the realities of rural patriarchy at its very heart. Its novelty lay in the fact

that the lack of accord was seen as a source not of distress but of optimism, evidence

of the countrys innocence and the possibility of an alternative, non-bourgeois

historical development. This sui generis cult of progress was rounded out with

a technological wager: Brazils innocence (the result of Christianization and

bourgeoisification barely scraping the surface) plus technology equals utopia;

modern material progress would make possible a direct leap from pre-bourgeois

society to paradise (Schwarz, 1987, p. 37).

33

Schwartz argues that Oswald de Andrades modernist programme, put forward in the

1920s, introduced a change of values and advocated cultural irreverence in place of

subaltern obfuscation, using the metaphor of swallowing up the alien: a copy, to be

sure, but with regenerating effect. A MAC of the periphery. Why should the appropria-

tion of an original be respected? Why should an original be attributed more value than a

copy? What would be a legitimate mode of challenging a boundary that establishes legal

differences between original and copy? In Oswald de Andrades programme, Brazilian

local primitivism would give a modern sense back to tired European culture, liberating

it from Christian mortification and capitalist utilitarianism. Brazils experience wouldbe a differentiated and utopian cornerstone in contemporary history.

Brazilian modernism therefore brought about a profound change of values: for the first

time processes in Brazil were said to have something to offer the modern world. Schwartz

claims that:

[h]istorical distance allows one to see that the programmatic innocence of the

Antropofagos, which allows them to ignore the malaise, does not prevent it from

emerging anew. Tupi or not Tupi, that is the question!Oswalds famous

saying, with its contradictory use of the English language to pursue the search for

national identity, a classical line and a play on words, itself says a great dealabout the nature of the impasse (Schwarz, 1987, p. 37).34



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Although the Antropofagos may have been programmatically innocent, a non-European

approach to the attributes of modernity (including the study of options in the construction

of sciences and technologies) faced consistent opposition from colonizers. At least until

the last decades of the twentieth century few things tended to provoke more opposition

than attempts to denaturalize or de-neutralize scientific and technological knowledgeand progress. This suspicion regarding any attempt to retard technological progress did

not go unnoticed by Albert Hirschman in 1971 when he wrote his influential A Bias for

HopeEssays on Development and Latin America. He remarked that:

otherwise rather enterprising United Nations experts who wrote the report on com-

modity trade and economic development [after the Second World War said]: We

are strongly opposed to retarding technological progress for the sake of avoiding

the pains of adjustment which inevitably attend progress. And they went on to advo-

cate a father-knows-better attitude in case the industrial countries were to encourage

the production of substitutes through subsidies: Industrial countries are not in the

habit of following such a course unless there are weighty reasons (Hirschman,

1971, p. 67).

Among colonizers a prospect even more distasteful than interfering in market pricing is

interfering with supposed neutral technical progress! On the other hand, the Unitron case

suggests that colonizers act differently if the prospects of winning contests with

established standards and within established spaces are not favourable. In such cases,

they do not hesitate to abandon their own standards and established spaces.35

Ontological Politics

Unitrons case suggests that the colonized explore the ontological politics36 involved in

the debate about property rights. The opportunity to perform ontological politics flows

from the fact that the fidelity of technoscientific artefacts to the colonizers partially

depends on the possibility of being able to attribute authorship to products of the

intellect, and thus turn debate about property rights from rights of possession to rights

of creation (Strathern, 1999, p. 161).

According to Latour, unexpected and indispensable allies do not look like men or

women, and, with the benefit of hindsight, the colonized can verify that this is true for

an iron axe, a hunting rifle, a motor, a microbe, a medicament, a vaccine, a paved road,a telephone, or an economic theory of comparative advantage (Latour, 1987, p. 121).

So now the question for a new post-colonial order is: how can the colonized better

negotiate their encounter with a computer, a virus, a drug, a cell phone, a piece of diag-

nostic equipment, a scientific or an economic theory? How can these unexpected and

indispensable allies of the colonizers be seen? I have claimed that Unitrons performance

suggests that the colonized may see these contemporary artefacts constructed in the

extended modern laboratories-factories law-office-courtrooms of the colonizers as

natural objects. Colonized may research new modern objects by initially integrating

them into a not-yet-demarcated NatureSociety whole. In this process boundaries may

be redefined, even radically redefined, bringing greater equality into the balance ofresources between the colonizer and the colonized.



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In/visibility

When a friend of mine who is a professor in England first went to Rio de Janeiro initially

he saw a child begging by a car as a child who belonged in that car. Though he had no

difficulty in seeing the adult beggars straight away (they immediately fit into the categories

of beggars in the big cities of rich countries) he did not see that attractive and androgynous

figure as a child wandering alone in the night, begging in a big city. It may be that for

someone coming from the affluent North, the category street child is not strongly or

immediately stabilized (Law and da Costa Marques, 2000). In the absence of stabilized

categories things become invisible, they are not recognized and may be more easily

repressed or denied. That child who belonged to no adult might be an entity that

remained invisible, outside of the universe, an entity that did not exist.

Categories Construct the In/visible

This little story illustrates that categories perform the visible and also the invisible. They

shape, conform and confirm objects (and subjects as well) and categories also hide.37 In

addition to making in/visibility possible,38 categories are like Pierre Bourdieusschemes of domination: when their form is sufficiently stabilized, they acquire the

opacity of things,39 rendering that which is behind them invisible.

The struggle for power is the struggle for the imposition of categories of perception of

the world. Categories of technoscience40 are constructed in the (extended) laboratories of

the colonizers, and the latter try to ensure that the tests of strength (in controversies) are

squeezed through laboratories and courtrooms because in these locations they are better

equipped to stabilize their own categories. First, it is in laboratories and courtrooms41

that the asymmetry of scales of the colonized and the colonizers relative capacitiesto create meaning seems to be most overwhelming. The resources assembled in the colo-

nizers (extended) laboratories are so great that they claim to define reality. The

colonized are left without power, that is, without resources to contest, to reopen the

black boxes, to generate new objects, to dispute the [colonizers] authority (Latour,

1987, p. 93). Moreover, modern colonizers have learned to construct a rhetoric so power-

ful that those who insist on denying their categories are delegitimized in one way or

anotherhistorically, they have been ridiculed, isolated and even considered mad

(Latour, 1987, p. 59). If different ontologies create different entities that populate

NatureSociety, then one battle frontthe tests of strength of their categoriesin the

contact zone between colonized and colonizers concerns in/visibility.Science and technology, or more precisely, technosciences are ontologies (systems of

belief) that originate from the material work of purification that takes place in the

colonizers extended laboratoriescourtrooms. To understand how they increase scales

and accumulate knowledge seems vital for non-Europeans who approach modernity.

One needs to understand how the attribution of meaning to categories such as Nature

and Society work. This political urge pertains to categories that create, for instance, the

opaque wall which is the truth effect of the claim that: modern Western sciences and

technologies are the legitimate spokesmen of Nature.

By using apparatuses of objectification from metropolitan centres of calculation and

purification

42

(laboratories and courtrooms), extended-science-and-technology profes-sionals align heterogeneous interests and appropriate other agents labour, services, and



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deference. In relation to science and technology, this is how subjection of the countries

approaching modernity is realized and reproduced. The colonized need to fight an ontologi-

cal battle in order to deconstruct this opaque wall and to construct a different scenario with

new visibilities.

Unitrons Case and Ontological Politics

The Unitron case provides evidence to show that the meanings attributed to copy and

authorship shape apparatuses of modern objectification and domination that acquire

the opacity of things. Accordingly, a copy is regarded as secondary, dependent on an

original, is considered worthless, etc. In this version of reality, the author would be the

creator of the original, of the independent, of what is worth more, etc. This places a

minus sign before the scientific and technological efforts of the colonized. But

authorship pertains more to authority than to originality. There was a time when artefacts

circulated with no mention of their creators, freely used and modified [in part] by other

creators. There was a time when the authora modern category that would identify theoriginal creatordid not exist, and therefore there was no need to respect him or her.43

In order to acquire legitimacy, the right to be paid for or otherwise dispose of their work,

the creators of Unitrons Macintosh clone would have to assert their authority (and their

authorship) over the artefact through controversies and tests of strength. They would

have to achieve what Latour calls the secondary mechanism of attribution and its

spaces of in/visibility.44 As indicated previously, some recent French philosophershave challenged notions of the primacy of the origin and the naturalized notion of copy.

Moreover, a stream of STS scholars have shown that hierarchies of the sort original

copy are provisional stabilizations. Furthermore, they have shown that the alignment of

human and non-human interests that juxtapose materials to realize those provisional stabil-izations may be researched and put to tests of strength according to the materiality of each

case. Values can be researched, analysed, studied and explained in the same way or terms

as facts.

Colonized/national is opposed to colonizer/foreign and original to imitated, and theseoppositions hide a great deal: parts of the alien in the autogenous and parts of the imitated

in the original. Of course, understanding these oppositions is not the same as undoing

them. There is a large gap between this promise of relief and its fulfilment: breaking

the intellectual bewilderment of the colonized does not by itself undo the situation. It is

clear that the colonizers unexpected allies (technoscientific innovations) do not become

immediately dispensable once the colonizers prestige deriving from originality has

been undermined.

Situated Encounters

The preceding analysis suggests that the Brazilian computer business entrepreneur and

manufacturer of the 1970s was an imagined semiotic character. In terms of ontological

politics, this Brazilian computer business entrepreneur and manufacturer was an interlo-

cutor for a material discourse (texts and prototypes) created in a community of pro-

fessionals. This community of professionals sought their interlocutor, searching for and

actually constructing her/him together with a government agency, namely, CAPRE,

which was in charge of implementing a computer industry policy. A new identity for aclass of entrepreneurs started to be performed by businessmen who invested in the local



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development of technology under locally organized market competition among local

equals. By means of non-tariff import controls the Brazilian government through

CAPRE was able to protect this new class of entrepreneurs, Brazilian minicomputer man-

ufacturers, and demand from them, in return, investments in local conception and design

of their products. This worked well, for within five years the Brazilian minicomputermarket was supplied by local firms with locally developed products (see Tigre, 1983;

Schmitz and Cassiolato, 1992).

Unitrons case can then be understood as a result of the situated encounter between

two colonizer colonized discourses. One is the discourse of economic development

(globalization, Enlightenment); the other concerns the generation of science and technol-

ogy in Brazil (autonomy, Romanticism). The different translations of the story of the

Indian led to concerns about the technological autonomy of the nation. Concern for the

technological autonomy of the nation suggested that artefacts produced by foreign

technologies should be studied as natural phenomenathat this study was legitimate

scientific work. The push for technological autonomy of the nation materialized the

idea implicit in the story of the Indian, that what is made by (is an artefact for) the

white man (foreign) may belong to Nature for the Indian (Brazilian). That is, it

may be non-Indian, or non-human for the Indian. Indeed, the slogan technology is

imported magic is a Brazilian saying. The foreign computer, something that can be felt

and sensed but not understood, integrated itself into Nature and, thus, initially became

non-human.

Foreign computers were thereby othered, becoming part of nature. Hence, their com-

mercial entanglements could be initially unmade and they could be studied in the realm of

things in themselves, separated from the realm of men among themselves. This move

would also constitute some Brazilian scientistsengineerslawyers as fact constructors

whose work was directed initially towards foreign technological black-boxes as if theywere natural phenomena. Moreover, Brazilian scientists engineers lawyers were consti-

tuting themselves as professional subjects in the same process that was constituting their

objects. These scientistsengineerslawyers were complex entities, Brazilian citizens,

men and women, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, lovers and beloved, with

many other links which might or might not resist the tests of strength that would

follow. The more these professional subjects, persons, complex entities or agencies,

would be able to resist and endure the consequences of their move to treat foreign techno-

logical black-boxes initially as if they were natural phenomena, the sturdier would result

the fact they were constructing.

Conclusion: Inevitable Hybrid Embraces and Dangerous Dialogues

Strathern shows how the hybrid embrace promoted by intellectual property rights entails

new practices of purification, while the right to intellectual property seeks its own new sep-

arations of Nature from Society (Strathern, 1999, p. 161). In the 1970s, Brazilian computer

professionals, in defending what I have depicted as the incorporation of the unknown in

the form of foreign technology (that is, artefacts which are the intellectual property of

an author) into the unknown in Nature (that is, non-appropriated natural phenomena),

committed what seemed to be an unbearable transgression in the imperial eyes of the

colonizers. But they were, in fact, retracing the division between Nature (which expandedto encompass new entities or objects) and Society (which contracted to lose, for example,



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copyrights and patents), which is something that moderns are constantly doing (Latour,

1993).

Thus, we may think about two Natures, one delineated by the colonized (computer

professionals of Brazil) and the other by the colonizers (western international capital

and technoscience): initially the former incorporates as natural objects the artefacts offoreign technology, while the latter denies that these are hybrid objects with complex

boundaries. This is the case, even though the colonizers have succeeded in partially

disentangling them to assign the corresponding rights to an author (creator). Neither

of the two natures (nor their respective societies) refers to a definite entity given in a

pre-discursive reality. In other words, the struggle for the fidelity of the allies of the

colonizers may be displaced to new (more even and less violent?) spaces of negotiation

by increasing the visibility of the ontological policing (surveillance and punishment) of

the colonizer. Colonizers appeal to a transcendent Nature and repress other ontological

possibilities in order to legitimate and impose specific social rules and hierarchies as

universally legitimate behaviour.

It is at this point that we can appreciate the ontological political character of the

proposal that the colonized might initially see artefacts constructed in the extended

modern laboratories (factory-laboratories attached to law-office-courtrooms) of the colo-

nizers as natural objects and research into them by integrating them into an unknown

NatureSociety whole. In this unknown, Nature and Society are not yet demarcated.

Moreover, some STS scholars may be learning how to move around on this ground,

treating these heterogeneous phenomena even-handedly. But for this treatment to

become effective it is clear that the colonized need to build their own extended

counter-laboratories which will construct new ontologies, veritable new worlds that

are not just nagging and inauthentic replications, colonies of Europe (Latour, 1987).

This requires, too, that the colonized become equipped with semiotic apparatuses thatcan account for the forked tongues of the colonizers (moderns).

Dialogue between colonizers and colonized is inevitable but it is also dangerous. This

is because the material capacity of the apparatuses of production of meaning of the

colonizers ([extended] centres of calculation in Bruno Latours terms) is incomparably

greater than that of the colonized. An asymmetrical situation is easily established, where

the colonizers categories stabilize and acquire Bourdieus opacity of things hiding what

lies behind them. Initial integration of the unknown in foreign technology into an

undifferentiated NatureSociety seeks instead to maximize the possibilities of different

hybrid embraces. This is the best hope at the start of a dangerous dialogue between

colonizers and colonized, that is, the best initial step to overcome the illusion and thecosts of a monologue in the imperative mode: the one-dimensional or rather one-natural

vision of a civilization that flows from Europe to the rest of the world.

Notes

1I have discussed the details of the Brazilian computer industry policy and stressed the differences between

developments in the 1970s and those emerging in the 1980s elsewhere. For texts in English see da Costa

Marques (2002 or 2000).2According to the IEEEUSAs Intellectual Property Committee, [t]he term reverse engineering means

the discovery by engineering techniques of the underlying ideas and principles that govern how a machine,

computer program or other technological device works. Engineers use this information for many purposes,including making other products interoperate with the target product that is the subject of the reverse



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engineering. Engineers also use this information for the purpose of designing competing products that are

not substantially similar in expression, as well as to discover patentable subject matter and ideas not

otherwise disclosed in the literature provided with the product by the originator. We further believe that

lawful reading, analysis, or disassembly of machine language is a reverse engineering technique by

which an engineer can reconstruct the ideas of a computer program. See http://www.ieeeusa.org/

forum/POSITIONS/reverse.html, accessed on 11 April 2004.3SEI report of process F-026398/85 approved on 20 November 1987, p. 5.4SEI report referent to process 07824/87-4 (Registro do Sistema Operacional do Microcomputador

Mac512), dated 11 November 1987.5VEJA, Micro vetadoCONIN proibe a venda de computador Unitron, Sao Paulo: 28 December 1988,

p. 42 (VEJA is the local equivalent to TIME magazine in Brazil. It sells over one million copies of its

weekly edition all over the country with a high concentration of subscribers in the richer southern states).6Law no. 7646, known as software law.7Addendum to technical report of 11 November 1987, dated 22 January 1988, relative to process 07824/

87-4.8In an interview with the author (Sao Paulo, 3 September 2001), Unitrons main shareholder and manager,

Geraldo Azevedo Antunes, denied SEIs accusation that Unitron had sold 100 machines before approval of

the project. According to him Unitron had onlyprovided

demonstration machines for special clients andhad not made regular commercial deliveries.9Source: Appeal to CONIN on part of Unitron for re-evaluation of SEIs decision to revoke the project of

manufacturing a clone of the Macintosh in Brazil, dated 10 August 1988, p. 11.10Ibid., p. 1.11In the case of a tied vote, the Minister of Science and Technology, president of CONIN, would have the

final word.12The representative of the Union of Data Processing Industry Employees, APPD (Associacao dos

Profissionais de Processamento de Dados), missed the meeting.13Jornal do Commercio, 20 December 1988.14Jornal do Brasil, 20 December 1988: CONIN decide que Unitron nao pode fabricar micro.15SEIs report on process F-026398/85, dated 20 November 1987, p. 6.16Jornal do Commercio, 20 December 1988 and O Estado de Sao Paulo, 20 December 1988.17O GLOBO, 19 December 1988, p. 15: Conin decide hoje se libera Unitron.18Interview with Claudio Mammana, President of ABICOMP during 198788. Braslia: 3 September 1996.19O GLOBO, 20 December 1988, p. 24: CONIN veta fabricacao do Unitron.20An incomplete list of seminal papers about translation would include Callon (1986), Law (1986), and Star

and Griesemer (1989).21Proceedings of conferences and seminars (SECOMU, SECOP, SUCESU) and journals (DADOS &

IDEIAS) of the 1970s. See also Adler (1987), da Costa Marques (2000, 2002), and Evans (1995).22That is, human knowledge imagined as something unified and metaphorically made equivalent to a stock of

knowledge of the human species, Man.23The vision of local frontiers of technological knowledge of the Brazilian computer professionals of the

1970s resonates with the later feminist STS notion of situated knowledges of the late 1980s. See

Haraway (1991, pp. 183201).24

Coordenacao das Atividades de Processamento Eletronico de Dados, a federal agency under the Minister ofPlanning.

25Latour (1987, 1993). For a very relevant treatment of hybridization in economics, see Callon (1998).26Note that radical redefinition of origins and borders is what the colonizers usually do with certain elements

of knowledge of the colonized. One instance of such redefinition is the handling of the healing properties of

plants, possessed by certain members of tribal societies, such as the shaman. A redefinition of origin (which

requires huge scales) translates the shamans mere belief into the Western laboratorys scientific discovery

entitled to intellectual property rights.27For an exploration of related hope and optimism see Latour (2003).28Latour (1987, pp. 124128): Tying up with new unexpected allies.29About this important point see especially Introduction and An essay on framing and overflowing in Callon

(1998).30Anti-Americanism amid the preference for elements of the modern life requiring the individual home, car,

telephone, computer, etc. and jeitinho brasileiro would be two examples of such ambivalent rejections



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noted by Partha Chatterjee. In his prized study of nationalism Chatterjee takes issue with John Plamenatzs

distinction between two types of nationalism (western and eastern) to clarify the premises the liberal-

rationalist dilemma in talking about nationalist thought (my emphasis).31Schwartz stresses that the concept does not mean a homage but refers to a social category.32In the data processing centre of the Brazilian internal revenue service, SERPRO, they developed a

keyboard concentrator that was inexpensive and simple. However, designed for SERPROs needs, thistechnology advantageously substituted the imported data entry systems equipped with expensive video

terminals that were used abroad. In the data processing centre of the Federal University of Rio de

Janeiro (NCE/UFRJ) they developed a floating point electronic processing unit, a hardware piece thatexecuted floating point arithmetic operations typical of scientific calculations much faster than software

subroutines. This kind of hardware processor was not an option offered by IBM for the IBM 1130

computer. Since most of the workload of university IBM 1130 computers was scientific calculus, this

development more than doubled the throughput of the machines, extending their use period and postponing

the importation of new machines. In the Brazilian Navy, military security was made problematic by

military computer professionals. They claimed Brazilian engineers did not have the technological capacity

to maintain Ferranti computers on board the frigates recently acquired from England. Brazilian computer

professionals translated cultural malaise into technological dependence and interacted with it by

constructing local prototypes.33Schwartz (1987, p. 37) notes that Marx himself, in his famous letter of 1881 to Vera Zasulich, came up

with a similar hypothesis that the Russian peasant commune would achieve socialism without a capitalist

interregnum, thanks to the means made available by progress in the West. Similarly, albeit in a register

combining jokes, provocation, philosophy of history and prophesy, the Pau-Brazil programme set itself

the aim of leaping a whole stage.34Tupi (pronounced too-pee in Portuguese) was the name of the Indian nation that at the time of the arrival

of the first Portuguese lived in the territory that is today the southeast coast of Brazil.35In one of his most compelling paragraphs Latour (1993, p. 38) remarks that [b]y separating the relations of

political power from the relations of [extended] scientific reasoning while continuing to shore up power

with reason and reason with power, the moderns have always had two irons in the fire. They have

become invincible. . . . Native Americans were not mistaken when they accused the White [colonizers]

of having forked tongues.36A politics about what there is in the world: see Law (1996, 2002), and Mol (1999).37To illustrate a correlative point in a simple way, Thomas Kuhn refers to experiments in which people had

difficulties recognizing playing cards the colour of which did not correspond with their suits (a black king

of hearts, for example) (Brumer and Postman, 1949, pp. 206223; Kuhn, 1962, pp. 6264).38[W]e seek to understand the role of invisibility . . . how . . . categories are made and kept invisible, and in

some cases, we want to challenge the silences surrounding them (Bowker and Star, 2000, p. 5).39. . . domination no longer needs to be exerted in a direct, personal way when it is entailed in . . . social

formations in which, mediated by objective, institutionalised mechanisms, such as those producing and

guaranteeing the distribution of titles (titles of nobility, deeds of possession, academic degrees, etc.),

relations of domination have the opacity and permanence of things and escape the grasp of individual

consciousness and power (Bourdieu, 1977, pp. 183184).40Categories of technoscience are (n1)th . . . n . . . (n 1) order forms constructed in heterogeneous and

dominating centers of calculation (Latour, 1987, p. 245). See also Latour (1999).41By the capacity to provide scientific or technical evidences or proofs.42Purification opposes hybridization (see Latour, 1993).43I thank Marcia J. Bossy for her comments on this point.44To follow these trials [of responsibility, where the winner takes all,] a distinction had to be made

between the primary mechanism that enlists people, and the secondary mechanism that designates a few

elements among the enlisted allies as the cause of the general movement (Latour, 1987, p. 174; also

see p. 134).

References

Adler, E. (1987) The Power of IdeologyThe Quest for Technological Autonomy in Argentina and Brazil(Berkeley: University of California Press).



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Bourdieu, P. (1972, 1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Bowker, G. C. (1994) Science on the RunInformation Management and Industrial Geophysics at Schlumberger

(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press).

Bowker, G. and Star, S. L. (2000) Sorting Things OutClassification and its Consequences (Cambridge, MA:

The MIT Press).

Brumer, J. S. and Postman, L. (1949) On the perception of incongruity: a paradigm, Journal of Personality,XVIII, pp. 206223.

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Cloning Computers SaC Ivan Marques

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