How did we come to accept that electronics must be opaque, disposable, and distant? This session invites participants to unlearn the myth of immaterial tech by reimagining electronics as something deeply local, cultural, and human.
🔹 Part 1: The Reign of Silicon
We begin with a sharp historical framing: how Silicon Valley and Shenzhen rose in parallel, driven not only by innovation but by access to raw resources, cheap engineering labor, and government-backed trade policies.
The result: homogenized design standards, disappearing public process knowledge, and devices disconnected from people and place.
Then, we shift to imagining a new model.
🔹 Part 2: City Planning for Local Electronics
Participants become city planners envisioning local electronics ecosystems.
In small, role-based groups—engineers, artisans, technicians, teachers, politicians—they’ll map:
- What’s made in their region, and why
- Who participates, from workers to public institutions
- How knowledge, pride, and repair flow through the system
🔹 Part 3: The Golden Ticket
Each participant receives a Golden Ticket—a letter-writing prompt.
They’ll write to a future child about a locally made product they helped create:
- What is it, and why does it matter?
- Who made it, and how is it cared for?
- What legacy does it carry?
They exchange tickets with another participant, and select letters will be read aloud to melt participants' hearts.
🔹 Part 4: Wall of Futures + Invitation to Build
We close with a ceremonial gathering of all visions.
Participants post their city plans and letters onto a shared Wall of Futures, then explore interactive stations:
- 🧱 LEGO Station – Model local factories or community centers
- 🗺️ Map Table – Plot future electronics hubs around the world
As a continuation of this session, we invite participants to join our offsite evening Meetup—an open gathering to bring (or discover) a piece of childhood electronics and share the story of how it shaped your imagination.
This Forum centers imagination, macroeconomic reframing, and tangible pride of place.
No engineering background needed—only a belief that technology can serve culture, not erase it.
Karina is a civil engineer, strategist, and founder of MGC—a global initiative rethinking how we build, teach, and tell stories about electronics. Her work spans over 50 countries with hubs in Shenzhen, Berlin, and New York, where she designs tools and ecosystems that return production power to communities. From advising MIT to remodeling China's leading expat makerspace, she has helped shape hardware culture at every level—from factory floor to museum wall.
Karina blends infrastructure with imagination, championing local, repairable, and culturally expressive electronics as the foundation for a more just technological future. Her practice sits at the intersection of manufacturing, education, and memory—ensuring that the people closest to the impact of tech are also those who shape it.
At MozFest, she invites participants to explore what electronics do, who they serve—and who gets to build them.
Building hardware ecosystems at the speed of light