Remote, informal, and ephemeral communities for testing technologies

Abstract

Nowadays our world is more connected than ever, and as a consequence, truly isolated places on planet Earth are very rare. This is perhaps because humankind has always travelled beyond frontiers to explore faraway places, and also because technology enables the application of science and skills, and the extraction or collection of resources from new regions.Some technologies can change the current view and future expectations of our societies, and the way that people interact within their immediate environment. Remote communities offer the opportunity to research the next step in the evolution of technologies. Through the study of narratives, this paper investigates the remote, informal, and ephemeral communities of practices (RIE-CoP) that undertake the brief use of some technologies. The use of additive manufacturing technologies for improvised repairs, rapid tooling, the study of potential efficiency energetic measures, and previous tests in the Spanish Antarctic Base provide short-term benefits such as reducing emissions and logistics costs, and making life more sustainable on the frozen continent. Furthermore, these technology tests offer action-based research about the management and future of RIE-CoP under extreme conditions across four Antarctic missions (from December 2015 to March 2019). The experiences provide narrative foresight for the future RIE-CoP, and the results are valuable in sectors such as military and humanitarian assistance, construction, and space missions.