Makroskop. How to Look at Technology?

Makroskop is a book of 42 concepts and illustrations that help make sense of the digital world on your own terms.

Technology shapes how we work, learn, build relationships, and make decisions. Talking about it often gets reduced to technical jargon, learning to use the next app, or trusting the promises of its creators. Makroskop offers a wider view. It explains selected technologies and digital phenomena, and shows how they connect to culture, the economy, the environment, and society. It helps readers notice dependencies, spot oversimplifications, and shape a more deliberate relationship with technology.

The illustrations are not decoration. They use visual metaphors to show relationships, tensions, and meanings that resist easy definition.

Team

Makroskop was created within Grupa Robocza by an interdisciplinary team. Maja Starakiewicz led the editorial work and illustrated the book. The essays were written by Ania Cieplak, Piotr Dziadowicz, Katarzyna Janota, Michał Krzykawski, Kuba Kulesza, Magda Starakiewicz, Maja Starakiewicz, Cezary Stępkowski, and Agnieszka Zgud, each bringing a different field of expertise to the project. This mix of backgrounds is part of the book's premise: understanding technology takes more than one discipline.

Grupa Robocza is also developing a digital workshop tool that lets people create their own visualizations of technology concepts. It starts from the entries and illustrations in the Makroskop lexicon, which participants then interpret and discuss.

Workshops built around the book and the tool are in preparation. A pilot will run in November 2026 at Apteka Designu in Kraków, open to teachers, educators, designers, librarians, cultural animators, students, and anyone working at the intersection of culture, technology, and education.

Interested in running similar workshops at your organization, or have another idea for collaboration? Get in touch at makroskop@robocza.org.