Radical Data

Radical Data is a collective, studio, research practice and learning space based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, that describes its mission as creating technology for liberation and joy. According to its official website, it brings together mathematicians, technologists, artists, dancers and organisers who work with digital technology and treat technology as something communities can shape together. Its practice is explicitly infused with queerness, decoloniality and experimentation, and it draws on practices from data science, socially engaged art and Latin American activism. The organisation operates across four overlapping modes. As a collective, it gathers people with diverse skills and backgrounds. As a studio, it creates tools, analyses, infrastructures and artworks. As a research practice, it studies how data is and can be used, collecting references, methods and projects through the Radical Data Archive. As an education provider, it runs workshops, shares tools and creates public-facing learning formats so that more people can shape technology on their own terms. Radical Data organises its work around three themes or lines of work. "Tools for Postcapitalism" designs and prototypes tools that make different economic relations possible, focused on cooperation, shared resources and collective abundance beyond extraction, scarcity and competition; its featured project is Mesh, a decentralised communication platform that works without the internet and cannot be switched off from above. "Collective Intelligence" builds systems, methods and experiments that help people think, decide and organise together, bringing lived, technical, embodied, human and more-than-human knowledge into the same space; its featured project is Cybersyn 2, a contemporary reimagining of socialist cybernetics co-built with rural communities in Southern Africa to organise food distribution beyond supermarkets, startups and middlemen. "Tecnología Popular" develops community-rooted technology through education, shared learning and collective practice; its featured project is the Museum of Stolen Artifacts, a decolonial museum dedicated to returning artefacts stolen during colonialism. Radical Data positions itself against mainstream technology culture. It states that its work starts from the people usually excluded from designing technology even though they live with its consequences every day — people whose knowledge is embodied, local, political and routinely ignored by mainstream tech. It frames its projects as experiments with different technological paradigms: tools for collective life rather than billionaire fantasies, and infrastructures that serve people rather than platforms that extract from them. It describes its aim as building and testing radical utopias together, reimagining what technology can do in the present and what kind of future it can help make. As a small, mission-driven organisation, Radical Data is not a conventional commercial enterprise with publicly traded shares or mass-market consumer products. Its outputs are better understood as projects, tools, research, workshops and cultural work. Wikidata records it simply as a company in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Its public presence centres on its website, radicaldata.org, which serves as a hub for its projects, archive and educational offerings.

Radical Data is a Netherlands-based collective, studio, research practice and learning space. Public information about its founding date and founders is not available in the supplied evidence; Wikidata records it simply as a company in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. What is documented is its self-described purpose and the shape of its practice. The organisation emerged from a convergence of practices: data science, socially engaged art and Latin American activism. Its website states that it brings together mathematicians, technologists, artists, dancers and organisers who work with digital technology for joy and liberation. This interdisciplinary composition is central to its identity — it is not a conventional software company but a collective that treats technology as a cultural and political medium as much as a technical one. Radical Data organises its work into four modes. As a collective, it gathers people with diverse skills and backgrounds. As a studio, it creates tools, analyses, infrastructures and artworks infused with queerness, decoloniality and experimentation. As a research practice, it studies how data is and can be used, collecting references, methods and projects through the Radical Data Archive. As an education provider, it runs workshops, shares tools and creates public-facing learning formats so more people can shape technology on their own terms. Its work is further structured around three themes or lines of work. "Tools for Postcapitalism" designs and prototypes tools that make different economic relations possible, focused on cooperation, shared resources and collective abundance beyond extraction, scarcity and competition. Its featured project is Mesh, a decentralised communication platform that works without the internet and cannot be switched off from above. "Collective Intelligence" builds systems, methods and experiments that help people think, decide and organise together, bringing lived, technical, embodied, human and more-than-human knowledge into the same space. Its featured project is Cybersyn 2, a contemporary reimagining of socialist cybernetics co-built with rural communities in Southern Africa to organise food distribution beyond supermarkets, startups and middlemen. "Tecnología Popular" develops community-rooted technology through education, shared learning and collective practice. Its featured project is the Museum of Stolen Artifacts, a decolonial museum dedicated to returning artefacts stolen during colonialism. Radical Data positions itself against mainstream technology culture. It states that its work starts from the people usually excluded from designing technology even though they live with its consequences every day — people whose knowledge is embodied, local, political and routinely ignored by mainstream tech. It frames its projects as experiments with different technological paradigms: tools for collective life rather than billionaire fantasies, and infrastructures that serve people rather than platforms that extract from them. It describes its aim as building and testing radical utopias together, reimagining what technology can do in the present and what kind of future it can help make. As a small, mission-driven organisation, Radical Data is not a conventional commercial enterprise with publicly traded shares or mass-market consumer products. Its outputs are better understood as projects, tools, research, workshops and cultural work. Its public presence centres on its website, radicaldata.org, which serves as a hub for its projects, archive and educational offerings.

A mission-driven collective, studio, research practice and learning space creating technology for liberation and joy, working from people usually excluded from designing technology and experimenting with tools for collective life rather than extraction.

• Mesh

  A decentralised communication platform that works without the internet, and cannot be switched off from above.

• Cybersyn 2

  A contemporary reimagining of socialist cybernetics, co-built with rural communities in Southern Africa to organise food distribution beyond supermarkets, startups, and middlemen.

• Museum of Stolen Artifacts

  A decolonial museum dedicated to returning artefacts stolen during colonialism.

• Radical Data Archive

  A collection of references, methods and projects studying how data is and can be used.

1. 1Radical Data - A collective creating an alternative future for data.radicaldata.org
2. 2About | Radical Dataradicaldata.org
3. 3Radical Datawikidata.org