IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2020 - 33

Rubem Alves, in his chronicle O Galo (The Rooster),
tells the "story of the Rooster that sang to make the sun
rise" [13, p. 61]. Every morning it climbed the chicken
coop and proudly sang, thinking he was the one who
made the Sun rise.
One day the Rooster's alarm clock did not ring,
so he overslept, and when he awoke, the Sun
was already there in the midst of the sky, with
that large smile of happiness, spreading light and
heat through all the animals of the valley. That
was a blow to the pride of the Rooster. He fell
into a depression, and sought the Owl, a psychoanalyst, and told the Owl his dreams. The Owl
pretended to listen, but did not actually pay
much attention, and only spoke in an ironic
Lacanian score: "Since the Sun rises even without your singing, why do not you throw the alarm
clock away?" [13, p. 61].
If the Rooster in this tale did not cause the Sun to
rise, it created, at least with its song, a sun that reached
the world of the chickens mediated by its singing. The
Solar Map of Rio de Janeiro, in turn, like the rooster,
enchanted the sun by means of its digital, cartographic,
and georeferenced calculations technologies, tracking it
and telling where and how it presented itself. In practice, the Solar Map made "the sun rise," modifying its
very existence for its users, who would no longer be the
same as a result of their information and interactions.
The Map gave visibility, so to speak, at the same level,
on the same screen, to a network of actors' associations
around the solar energy systems of Rio: sun, residents,
suppliers, supportive and foment institutions, governments and rulers, favela, non-favela, etc., and the Solar
Map itself.
Latour, describing the Actor Network Theory (ANT)
and the value of these associations among the different
actors who are also networks, states that
we are now interested in mediators making other
mediators do things. "Making do" is not the same
thing as "causing" or "doing": there exists at the
heart of [this dynamic] a duplication, a dislocation, a translation that modifies at once the whole
argument. Before, it was impossible to connect an
actor to what made it act, without being accused
of "dominating," "limiting," or "enslaving" it. This
is no longer the case. The more attachments an
actor has, the more it exists. And the more mediators there are the better [3, p. 217].
The Solar Map, this enabler of plentiful connections,
made the sun more existent in its relations with those
MARCH 2020

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Marginalized communities suffer
from what economists call "energy
poverty," where they lack access
to energy utilities.
interested in photovoltaic systems within the city, "making it do" many other things than only brighten the day
or gild the skin of the locals. However, the sun was no
longer the same, being now connected to lots of institutions, people, speeches, and other systems. It was now
a sun that enabled calculations of photovoltaic systems, that was able to generate energy, and which in its
"making do," caused suppliers to sell and install technological systems on roofs. This would then make Rio
de Janeiro the "solar energy capital," with such desire
declared in the name of the aforementioned Rio Capital
Energy Program.

A Technology to "Make" the Sun not Rise
However, due to this mediation, the Map also made
appear at least two distinct classes of inhabitants: a
class who could enjoy all these relationships with the
sun, and another excluded from these possibilities. In
fact, for a resident of a middle-class neighborhood
(Figure 1), when he/she indicated his/her address on
the Map, the answer was an illuminated roof with
some information. In contrast, when the resident of a
favela carried out the search from his/her address
his/her answer was darkness (Figure 2).
In all Rio's favela areas, the zoom in the Solar Map
showed that they were in the penumbra (Figure 3). In
these cases, the coloring of the roofs displayed for
addresses of non-favela neighborhoods with their potential for generating solar energy, gave way to gray without
information for the favelas roofs: Babilônia, Chapéu
Mangueira, Morro Dona Marta, Barreira do Vasco, Morro
dos Macacos, Morro dos Prazeres (Santa Tereza), Salgueiro, Borel, Formiga, Maré, Complexo do Alemão, Vidigal and so on.
The Map finder also made it possible to search
through various databases (or data classes), including
one specifically for the favelas, according to Figure 4.
The "Find favelas" category is curious because it only
emphasized the "presence of absence" or the "manifest
absence" of favelas on the Map. That is, it was possible
to look for the favela da Babilônia, for example, to find it
in the dark.
Would the justification for the erasure of poor communities on the Map be their very tiny roofs? As a

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