Guest editor’s introduction:

In this reflection, Mixe scholar and activist Yásnaya Elena Gil turns her powerful intellect on the concept of innovation, revealing how mainstream notions of technological progress are conditioned by the values of capitalism and proposing an alternative model. In this moment, when the cult of profit is taking its toll so violently in overlapping environmental and humanitarian crises, this valorization of collectivity and reciprocity is a vital call to action. —Valeria Luiselli and Heather Cleary

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It often happens that, when I talk about the relationship between technology and capitalism, someone pops up to present me with an argument I call the iPhone fallacy. “Without capitalism, we wouldn’t have the technology you use to write from the comfort of your iPhone,” they retort. It doesn’t matter that I don’t have an iPhone, the point remains: it would be impossible to do many of the things we do today without the devices developed through and as technology—including criticizing technological advances. We couldn’t, moreover, criticize anything without the vaccines and other medical advancements that make our very existence possible. The capitalist imaginary has co-opted the creative power behind what we call technology so thoroughly that “technological advances” and “capitalism” are now treated as interchangeable ideas. Those who employ the iPhone fallacy label anyone who criticizes technology’s role in contemporary systems of oppression— specifically its role in our current climate emergency—as anti-technology and accuse us of wanting to push humanity back into a primitive state in which technological progress doesn’t exist. But they’re wrong. 

In broad terms, we can think about technology as a set of techniques, instruments, knowledge, and processes developed by humanity to create modes of relating to our surroundings. It is worth underscoring that this set we call technology is more than just technique; it is a dynamic, ever-changing system. By surroundings, I refer not only to the ecosystems of which humans form a part, but also to the societies into which we have organized ourselves. Beneath technology’s very existence lies the idea of an “other”—whether “natural” or “social”—with which it is possible to establish a relationship mediated by the metabolic system that is technology. This relationship transforms both “us” and that “other.” It goes without saying that technology, seen in this light, is closely related to creativity and that singular thirst for knowledge we talk so much about—the one that appears in many narrative traditions like the Mesoamerican legend of the possum and the myth of Prometheus, both of whom stole fire and the knowledge associated with its control to transform their surroundings. (In this sense, perhaps the distance between art and technology is not as great as is usually thought, since creativity underlies both concepts, though that is a reflection for another time.) Following this line of argumentation, we can assert what has already been said by numerous voices in different languages and traditions of thought: that according to this broad definition of technology, agriculture would be one of humanity’s principal technological innovations, along with writing and many other quotidian phenomena that are no longer viewed as technologies. Each society develops its own technological innovations according to its characteristics, needs, and systems of thought.

We can think about the Mesoamerican system of the milpa as a contemporary technology—I say “contemporary” because like all technologies it distills thousands of years of tradition, but it exists as a current mode of cultivating food for concrete societies. “Milpa” is a word that comes from the Nahuatl language and could be translated literally as “sown plot”— though, as is always the case, the term denotes much more than its etymology suggests. The milpa is an agroecosystem for the cultivation of corn, beans, squash, and a wide array of edible species that form a symbiotic feedback loop. And while it is possible to identify concrete techniques and instruments that have been developed for the cultivation of a milpa, this technology also comprises the knowledge of how to employ these techniques and instruments—as well as the rituals, beliefs, stories, holidays, and social relations woven around the milpa. Like every technology, the milpa exists within a broad network of meanings, social mediations, and even emotions. However, it stands in contrast to another contemporary technology associated with the cultivation of food: agro-industrial technology, which also exists within a broad network of social relations (above all economic ones), and which is oriented toward the capitalist demand of maximizing production. This is why it focuses on monocultures that require machinery, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides to achieve its targets, impacting the soil in ways directly linked to environmental degradation. The consumption of these agro-industrial products is shaped by certain dietary habits promoted by the advertising industry—while creating health issues that generate yet another market related, at least in part, to pharmaceutical technologies. As such, we can observe in both the milpa and industrial agriculture that technology is not neutral with regard to the traditions of thought and other aspects of the societies from which it emerges. Both technological traditions are constantly being innovated, and both present solutions to problems or desires specific to their contexts. Technology is neither ideologically nor economically aseptic. And yet positivist approaches to technological innovation present industrial agriculture as a more advanced and modern technology, while relegating the milpa to the past and to underdevelopment. This despite the fact that the milpa proposes a better strategy to confront a problem that is as contemporary as the climate emergency to which industrial agriculture has actively contributed. 

This brings me to my next point: we need to uncouple the concept of technology from the ideas of progress and development. In this sense, I find the concept of technological innovations more useful than that of technological advancements. Every innovation is a response to a series of contexts; this doesn’t necessarily imply a linear upward trajectory according to which each is superior to the one that came before. How can one argue that capitalist technologies at the service of easier exploitation of the natural world are intrinsically more advanced, when they contribute to global warming and therefore put humanity at risk? In what sense is that advanced? If we’re talking about improving quality of life, we need to seriously consider whether the ecological devastation we are witnessing makes our lives better in any way. Technological innovation is an intrinsic part of humanity and has existed since long before the Industrial Revolution and capitalism; its existence is universal and atemporal because it is profoundly linked to our collective creativity. As such, non-capitalist technology is a viable possibility. 

In reports by various international bodies, Latin America and the Caribbean appear as having among the lowest indexes of technological progress, with the least number of patents and technological innovations. According to these reports, technological innovation is only meaningful when it plays by the market’s rules. In order for technological innovation to occur, however, there must be an entire network of prior knowledge cultivated by many people and groups over a long period of time; in this sense, all innovation is collective. But these days, one can claim an individual right over innovation—not the right to be recognized in society for it, but rather, the right to exploit it commercially. Patents are the rights that a state’s legal framework bestows on the individual who proves they are the intellectual author of an invention, in order to protect its commercial exploitation. Businesses can claim this right, too. So sacred is this patent-protected right to commercial exploitation that even in the middle of a brutal pandemic like COVID-19, a large part of the pharmaceutical industry refused to release the patents for their vaccines—demonstrating that their right to the commercial exploitation of intellectual property outweighed the universal right to life. 

The phrase “intellectual property” is problematic in and of itself—giving little public recognition to the ideas, creations, and discoveries of other people, which always enable innovation to occur collectively and through dialogic relations. Instead, “intellectual property” is closely tied to the possibility of turning a technological innovation into a commodity. Even though technological innovations take place within a complex social structure, it is only their commercial exploitation that is protected by law. In contrast, the technologies associated with the milpa are not patented, and although they were innovated over thousands of years by specific individuals, they remain collective and open to constant interventions. Who could patent this technology? In 2018, it came to light that scientists at UC Davis were researching a type of corn grown in the milpas of Mixe communities in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca. This corn is distinctive in that it fertilizes itself through aerial roots that capture nitrogen from the atmosphere. This species exists thanks to thousands of years of cumulative knowledge that includes proper seed selection, but this knowledge, which could represent a revolution in agriculture, is now being studied for the purpose of commercialization. In other words, the intention is to translate this collective knowledge into a private commodity within the capitalist marketplace. 

The parts of the world that register the most patents are also, coincidentally, the parts of the world that have benefitted the most from patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. In contrast, the places whose lands and peoples have historically been exploited by the metropolis are accused, today, of lagging behind in technological progress and not producing enough patents. Those who benefitted from slavery, from exploiting colonized territories, and from relegating their care work to women had the resources and time to dedicate to technological innovation, patenting it and reaping its economic profits. In these cases, the technological advances attributed to competition within the capitalist system are actually built on the systemic exploitation and oppression of other people’s bodies and territories—the same people who are later accused of technological backwardness. All this explains, then, how parts of the world like Latin America and the Caribbean could be considered technologically backward: the benefits of the technologies developed as a result of their exploitation never return. The slow distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in Africa is a clear example of this. The vaccination of people on that continent was never a priority to the patent holders (unless it was to perform early testing, as several French specialists have suggested), despite the fact that many of the materials required for western technological advances come from African countries. Likewise, if there is any value to the production of a mobile phone, that value is intrinsically tied to the peoples and territories exploited for its production, though the economic benefits never reach us and the technological benefits reach us only if and when we become consumers of those phones. 

The underlying problem is not, then, the technological innovation present in all cultures and societies around the world. Rather, it is capitalist technological development, which has become the dominant model through its ability to turn innovations into commodities, and through its exploitation of the natural world—a trait that has put the existence of humanity at risk through climate disaster. But another form of technology is possible. It has been possible all along. 

One of the great catastrophes faced by the Indigenous population of this continent has been European colonization. Between epidemics, wars, and forced labor, it is estimated that nine out of ten Indigenous people lost their lives in the area known today as Mexico. The scale of this loss is unthinkable. Nonetheless, despite this calamity, many communities continue to exist and to innovate on the basis of non-capitalist technologies like the milpa. What has allowed their survival, contrary to all predictions? Their capacity for innovation endured, even in the most catastrophic moments, through reciprocity. Reciprocity has been proposed as an alternative to capitalism by the Nishnaabeg author Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and the Zapotec thinker Jaime Martínez Luna. Unlike charity or assistance, which imply vertical relations, reciprocity is a system based on the conviction that individual wellbeing depends profoundly on the wellbeing of the collective. As a result, beyond the moral dimension, reciprocity can be seen as a strategy that pervades all social relations to order life via non-capitalist economic relations. According to this idea, Mesoamerican societies formed communities that allowed them to resist the onslaught of colonialism and, despite everything, to continue developing their technologies of relating to the natural world and other people. Because of these reciprocal relationships, a large proportion of so-called nature reserves can be found in the territories of Indigenous communities. 

If the strategy of reciprocity made it possible to survive the disaster of colonialism, it could also be a response that makes non-capitalist technological innovation possible. We have already had success with this strategy. If technology were to emerge from a reciprocal relationship with its surrounding ecosystems, it would not be necessary to turn natural resources into commodities consumed in ever-greater quantities. The problem with capitalist technology is not the pleasurable experience of invention but the way it turns invention into a commodity that always requires growing demand. Technological developments can be uncoupled from the exploitation of the natural world and promote still more innovation if we smash the locks of patent law that keep them beyond reach. If patents were opened, a vast collective could contribute reciprocally to further innovation, having been freed from the restrictions imposed by commodification. On this point, the philosophy behind open-source software overlaps with the traditions of many Indigenous societies around the world—societies that, in the face of great adversity, have continued to innovate without patents. Technological innovation beyond the reach of capitalism would not in any way be a step backward; it would be stealing fire from the market to return it to a collective that would multiply and share its uses. According to this idea, shared innovation would benefit all, not only the consumers whose growing demand is devastating natural resources. 

The technological solutions proposed by green capitalism—which does not want to halt market growth—are a false solution to the looming climate crisis. As long as technology is held captive as a private commodity, it will continue doing violence to nature. Grounded in other traditions, above all those of Indigenous societies, technological innovation in reciprocal relation with the land and its people offers us a possible future in the face of climate emergency—a possible future already proven by our resistance in the past.