En el mundo de los insectos esta transformación se produce como el resultado de una auto-digestión, un fundirse total (meltdown) de la oruga en la que sólo permanecen intactos unos pocos focos de tejido vivo, los discos imaginales. Es a partir de ellos que emergen piernas, alas, antenas, segmentos corporales y otras estructuras de la forma adulta como un ser transformado e integrado, la mariposa. Sólo podemos especular qué pueden significar las correspondencias culturales de esta metáfora (2

Teenagers in Sao Paolo’s favelas, who cannot afford airtime, use their device as a “media locker,” passing them on to friends after once loaded with recorded songs and video (Bar etal., 2011). Similarly in India, Bluetooth is used to load and exchange music, completely avoiding download expenses (Kumar and Parikh, 2013).

for analytic purposes we next order them from the less confrontational baroque to the more radical cannibalism, with creolization somewhere “in-between” (Santiago, 2001). While they are second nature for Latin Americans, we observe them throughout the world. Together, these modes offer a powerful taxonomy to understand innovation through mul-tiple appropriation strategies.

Gil, who later became Brazil’s Minister of Culture, described tropicalismo as “No longer a mere submission to the forces of economic imperialism, but a cannibalistic response of swallowing what they gave us, processing it, and making it something new and different” (Dibbell, 1989: 78). Within this historical perspective, Gil’s ministry support for Open Source and Free Software takes on its full meaning.

Three strategies deserve particular attention for their symbolic value: cannibalism, baroque, and creolization. Cannibalism is appropriation trough dismembering, absorption, and chemical transformation. Baroque—an infiltration strategy—is the artistic appropria-tion of spaces through filling and layering. In-between, creolization is appropriatio

François Bar, Matthew Weber, and Francis Pisani advocate for a cul-tural model of technological appropriation drawn from Latin America. Appropriation draws attention to how users interpret, manipulate, and repurpose technology in creative and unexpected ways. Their cycle of evolution suggests cultural mechanisms of appro-priation: baroquization, creolization, and cannibalism. This new vocabulary to understand technological appropriation un-moors the notion of “hacking” from Western modernity. It encourages us to think about how users and cultures are central to a technology’s life-cycle. Beyond just signaling difference, Bar, Weber, and Pisani suggest that innovation on the periphery is a powerful process that merits consideration.