The Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA) was founded in 1998 as a technological research and development organization dedicated to the cause of individual and collective self-determination. Its mission is to study the forces and structures which affect self-determination and to provide technologies which extend the autonomy of human activists. The institute engages, inter alia, in contestational robotics, a research initiative and work mode which inverts the traditional relationship between robots and authoritarian power structures by developing robots to meet the needs and budgets of culturally resistant forces.
Projects such as ”Little Brother” and ”Graffiti Writer” invert the traditional connection between research processes and centers of power. They encourage people to share their thoughts with their communities, exploring possibilities of using new technologies. ”Studies have shown that in nearly 100% of the cases, a given agent of the public will willingly participate in high profile acts of vandalism, given the opportunity to do so via mediated tele-robotic technology.” This distinction illustrates the social potential inherent in tactics of inverted robotics which the Institute employs.
iSee is a project for cell-phones based on a real time updated database that allows any user to program urban routes with the smallest exposition to surveillance and close-circuit cameras. In times of crisis it is easy to justify any increase in security and surveillance means without providing any proof of their efficacy, while their only certain achievement lies in limiting of civilian freedom and privacy in the public sphere. Projects criticizing the policy of security and surveillance are especially vital in times of crisis which is further reinforced by the authorities (mainly after 9/11).
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