Abstract
The »socio-material infrastructures« consist of material and immaterial elements, which help to understand certain complexities of our surroundings. The structures also give insights on how the »flows« of information or resources are circulating or not. They reveal who is part of the infrastructure and which actors are left behind – and therefore excluded from certain advantages that are mostly the results of digital communication platforms. Thus, this theoretical concept can help designers to understand how to tackle the digital divide in a more effective manner. This paper shows not only the theoretical framing of the »socio-material infrastructures« concept but also reveals the transfer to practice within two cases that are different in context, and similar in objectives. In the research projects, technologies were developed with and for specific underrepresented actors, as citizens affected by certain local issues. For these actors, new technological solutions were developed to let them be part of certain processes and to change their situation from the current to a preferred one. Thus, they were involved in the development process of these technologies, which were published opensource or using open data. Through these cases, we witness that technologies serve as enablers, which are utilized and adapted by the user itself, through which a digital common can evolve. This paper explores how those citizen-based technologies can be turned into a glocal enabler for not only some but for many. Therefore, cross-scaling strategies need to be explored and developed, which will be the final discussion of this paper.