Free Space Optics in the Czech Wireless Community: Shedding Some Light on the Role of Normativity for User-Initiated Innovations

Abstract

The article investigates how users in the Czech wireless network community invented a technology for sending data over visible, red light. For five years, this was the most affordable method for connecting computers. The development of this technology was guided by the idea that it should be controlled by its users. With reference to this experiment, it is argued that a shared ethical and/or political vision can contribute to the establishment of norms within user communities encouraging their members to share information with each other. Thus, it is suggested that ethical and political convictions can be crucial for enabling collective innovation processes. This highlighting of normativity is intended as a complement to the common premise in Innovation Studies that users innovate to satisfy unfulfilled needs. In opposition to this view, it is argued that the needs of users are not a constant but something which emerge together with the transformation of the user community and the technology in question. Particular focus is placed on the tension between, on one hand, the norms and ethical— political motives of the user community, and, on the other hand, the needs satisfied through product development, both stemming from the same innovation process.