Daniel García Andújar

Street access machine . 1996

Daniel García Andújar . + Museo Reina Sofía

Presented with original posters » Products offered by Technologies To The People (TTTP), the company founded by Daniel G. Andújar, range from the Street Access Machine® over the Recovery Card® and Internet Street Access Machine® to the Personal Folkcomputer®. All of these (fictitious) products and technologies aim to allow the socially underprivileged to participate in the emergent information society. While the Internet Street Access Machine® promises »access for all«, the Street Access Machine® and Recovery Card® enables beggars to accept payment by credit card. The project unmasks the belief, propagated by those who manufacture the associated products (and by »Californian ideology«*), that a democratizing potential is inherent to technology. The world shown by TTTP on its posters and leaflets is neither more just thanks to the deployment of these new technologies, nor is it accessible to all — despite the claims made by providers of telecommunications applications. Even if they use the latest info-society tools, beggars remain beggars, the socially marginalized remain socially marginalized. Technologies tend to reinforce, rather than alter, social structures. When the project was presented in Hamburg in 1996, a (bona fide) mail was received from Apple, announcing the company’s interest in the (fictitious) product range of TTTP.**
Daniel García Andújar