"Ernesto Oroza has spent much of his time studying the technological innovations that popped up during “The Special Period in the Time of Peace,” the Cuban government’s euphemism for the 90s collapse of the country’s economy that’d been set up for thirty years of isolation. He found scores of homebrew, DIY machines that citizens made to get by when no other options existed. In 2010, Motherboard visited Oroza in Miami to talk about his discoveries and the mass of brilliant creations made by Cuba’s DIY inventors.

Cuba’s inventor culture has its roots in the 70s, when a group of revolutionary-minded scientists and mechanics formed the National Association of Innovators and Rationalizers (ANIR). Building on the ethos of Che Guevara, ANIR untied hacker-minded folk with the needs of an isolated economy and the call of a socialist revolution. Oroza showed us his meticulous collection of machines from this era, which he has contextualized as art pieces in a movement he calls “Technological Disobedience.”

short article source: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/mbtv-the-technological-disobedience-of-ernesto-oroza