Wireless in the Weather-world and Community Networks Made to Last

I describe grassroots innovation and recursive engagement in Argentina by members of rural Community Networks (CNs), or decentralized telecommunications that people build and operate themselves. Hackers began the CNs to resist the dominant internet regime through peer collaboration but, these days, their members’ technical competences, life experiences and perspectives on communality and solidarity are diverse. I apply Tim Ingold's concepts in analysing links between technology, social relations and bodies in the CNs, and how co-design of an app unfolded along paths of growth and repair. The WiFi network materialises the liveliness of processes that go into forming it, and the app materialises CN members’ efforts to enact awareness of their own nodes to maintain the network. The Argentine CNs and Ingold's perspective on commoning illustrate that being aware of local details and adapting to the ways things are going in the living world is vital to making shared resources last.