About

My mother named me Douglas da Silva Ferreira in Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1991.

Sometime between the fall of the Soviet Union and the present day, I played more games and watched more anime than I probably should have, and although I did not grow up with books at home, I ended up reading a considerable amount. As a boy, I wanted to be a writer, but so far I have not managed to become one, although I do write things from time to time. Besides that, I have been in psychoanalysis for 12 years, and I wander around Letra Freudiana, trying to become an analyst.

Along the way, I collected a few degrees, not that any of that matters much. But if you are the sort of person who cares about these things, I have papers in a folder saying that I hold a bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences from UFRJ, a master’s degree in the History of Science and Technology from the same institution, a postgraduate specialization in Data Science from USP/ESALQ, and that I am duly enrolled in a PhD program in Social Communication at PUC-Rio. What I like most about all of that, though, is having been a wandering academic, never staying anywhere for very long.

I spent many years teaching at public high schools and also worked as a school principal. Today, I work at the Instituto Democracia em Xeque and at the Observatory of Algorithms and Information Systems with Social Impact — OASIS/UFRJ, and I am also part of CondadoLab.

I am deeply suspicious of hierarchies and have a very sincere desire to help build other forms of social organization that are less dystopian, miserable, and brutal. Above all, I consider myself a libertarian socialist. Perhaps that is the only title I am truly proud to carry.