How can we explain what the Internet is to everyone? Nayantara Ranganathan of the Internet Democracy Project talks about her creative strategy.
Why did you decide to make this particular video?
A lot of digital literacy efforts are often very intimidating. Many people don’t think technology is their ballgame, even though technology is not limited to information and communication technologies.
For instance, the implement that you use to make chapatis could be called technology. What is called ‘user experience’ could be the handle on your mug that helps you hold a hot beverage. So, a lot of these high-tech sounding terms are actually simple concepts that all of us use in everyday life.
I have been trying out the method in workshops we do at the Internet Democracy Project. We wanted to make concepts of digital security and the Internet less intimidating, and more visual for people. We made it into a video format after Greenhost and Totem Project gave us this idea. They supported it too.
What is the central concept you want to illustrate through this video?
The video captures what the Internet is and the actual physical infrastructure of the Internet. Infrastructure is designed to be invisible, which is often useful as a design principle, because you don’t want to learn about the electric grid before switching on your light.
But on the other hand, this invisibility harbours a lot of power, and people cannot participate unless they are aware of it.
Can you talk a little about rangoli, the form you use in the video to depict the Internet?
Rangoli is, at the material level, a white powder that is used to draw designs with your hand in front of your houses. It basically has a decorative function. It’s a woman’s job to put the rangoli every morning, as part of the domestic duties of keeping everything clean and welcoming.
Rangoli is quite prevalent across the country, in different forms. One kind of rangoli follows the logic of putting dots and drawing connections between these dots. It’s a very useful analogy to talk about networks.
So do you think this kind of training methodology or video would have an inherent appeal for women, or would make it easier to explain network infrastructure to women?
In my experience, it has been. Rangoli is something that is passed on generationally, it’s something that culturally exists. These days, of course, there are books and YouTube videos about different designs, but essentially rangoli is something that comes intuitively — you just put a matrix of dots and then go with the flow. People are used to making different kinds of designs, thinking about it creatively, so it definitely has an inherent friendliness for women.
In an ideal training, there would be an equal number of people who know rangoli, but not networking concepts, and an equal number of people who know networking concepts, but not rangoli. So everyone is learning something from the others and no one thinks they’re the expert in the room. This flattens a lot of the anxieties around trainings and the power dynamics.
Did you share the video with family members? What did they say?
I had to share it with my mum because every time I would travel I had to go buy rangoli and colours and all of that. She was amused at first, and then when it started happening again and again, she was really concerned. She asked me if I wanted to change my job, because she was like, ‘I thought you do cyber security, why are you doing rangoli?’ I guess that says a lot about what we think about women’s labour, which is typically undervalued.
