I remember studying in community centers and public schools. The computers were slow, the internet would drop, but they were our windows. And it was during a buffering YouTube video, between one video and another, that many of us heard about Bitcoin for the first time. Something that would come not from the bank, not from the government – but from the internet itself.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the city (or the world), someone was trading their cellphone for a newer model. This gesture, so common in capitalism, generates a hidden flow: electronic waste that is not waste, but raw material. It reaches the peripheries, into the hands of those who fix, adapt, and reconfigure. Second-hand Androids, recycled robots, repurposed chips.
These ‘leftover’ technologies carry not just hardware – they carry dreams.
And dreams, when combined with knowledge, become rebellion.
George Orwell, in 1984, described a watched, controlled world, where technology serves power. But what if the same technology discarded by this system is used to escape it?
It was by reading the first chapters of 1984 that I realized: Big Brother is already here. But he is not invincible. In the breaks, in community centers, in refurbished devices, decentralization becomes a survival strategy. Blockchain, cryptocurrencies, alternative networks – all of this comes through cracked screens and slow processors, but it comes.
And that is not romantic. It’s difficult. Technology requires time. It requires patience. It requires that you have awareness of the present, judgment of the past, and understanding of the work for the future.
But that’s how you plant a seed: in good, well-cared-for soil.
Sometimes good soil is a cellphone that would go to waste.
Sometimes, care comes from those who aren't afraid to fix things.
And in the end, what seemed like waste becomes a link.
What was waste becomes decentralization.
What was control becomes connection.
