Roberto J. González is the chair of the anthropology department at San José State University. He has authored several articles and books, including Zapotec Science: Farming and Food in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca, American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and the Human Terrain, Militarizing Culture: Essays on the Warfare State, and most recently, Connected: How a Mexican Village Built Its Own Cell Phone Network. He also co-produced the documentary film Losing Knowledge: 50 Years of Change (with Laura Nader). He is currently finishing a new book on virtual warfare and the militarization of big data. Follow him on Twitter @gonzalez_r_j.
When an Indigenous community in Oaxaca, snubbed by telecom giants, created its own mobile network, things didn’t go exactly as planned. But the experiment revealed the strength of its social bonds.
