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Title: The Pandemic's Dark Cloud |
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Author: Mel Hogan |
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"The Pandemic\'s Dark Cloud" was written in November 2020 as a |
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reflection on the relationship between the pandemic and environmental |
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media, with a focus on "the cloud" and its undergirding networked |
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infrastructure. The central idea of this piece is to demonstrate the |
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interconnectedness of all things -- covid, care, community, nature, |
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ewaste, racism, greed -- in both the making and undoing of our modern |
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communication systems. |
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This piece is intended as a provocation, so your thoughts and feelings |
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are very welcomed! |
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*Mél Hogan is the Director of the *[*Environmental Media Lab |
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(EML)*](https://www.environmentalmedialab.com/)* and *[*Associate |
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Professor*](https://www.melhogan.com/)* at the University of Calgary, |
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Canada. She is also an Associate Editor of the Canadian Journal of |
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Communication. Career highlights so far include keynoting the 2020 |
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McLuhan lecture at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin, and giving a plenary |
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at transmediale 2020.\ |
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\@mel\_hogan / melhogan.com / mhogan\@ucalgary.ca* |
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# The Pandemic\'s Dark Cloud by Mél Hogan |
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As the pandemic settled into consciousness across the globe, humans |
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devolved. People in countries where the response to COVID-19 was most |
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mismanaged started to snack a lot.^[^1]^ Pre-sliced packaged |
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charcuterie. Ritz crackers. Oreo cookies. In their growing helplessness, |
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people also sharply increased their consumption of alcohol, especially |
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women in the US.^[^2]^ For some it was drugs. Those lucky enough to keep |
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their job doubled down on work, staying at their stations or desks for |
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longer hours -- part avoidance and part stuckness into systems that |
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could offer no other plan. |
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|
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The dread by now is cumulative. Pick your pain: covid19, white |
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supremacy, climate catastrophe. People are reaching new levels of |
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"doomscrolling" on social media, playing online video games, and |
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"binge-watching" Netflix as ways to pass the time, waiting on the virus |
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to run its course, or for politicians to make a plan. As things shut |
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down, Zoom quickly took over as the way to communicate at a safe social |
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|
distance. Education quickly became clicking at screens. No more shopping |
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in person meant ordering by way of interfaces. All of these screens more |
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or less allowed things to continue, if not as normal, as a viable |
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alternative in the meantime. It remains to be seen if this online world |
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we've adopted so quickly is the new normal, and here to stay, or if |
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it'll reflect to us the inefficiencies of how we lived before and save |
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us from ourselves. Or, maybe it will call into question the terrible |
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inequities that are only made more evident by this pandemic. |
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|
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By April, the news media were already reporting that lockdowns had meant |
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cleaner air and clearer water.^[^3]^ Satellite images showed less |
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pollution over China and the US. Animals were found roaming freely in |
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different parts of India.^[^4]^ "Nature is healing" became a popular |
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meme celebrating the lessening of human impact and nature's |
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recovery.^[^5]^ But were the effects of lockdown, or quarantine, of |
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humans being trapped in their homes, and of doing everything online, |
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truly a more sustainable way of going about life? Had the turn to "the |
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cloud" proven to be the weightless way forward? Social isolation and |
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disinformation propagation problems aside, could the internet become a |
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tool to inadvertently save the environment? |
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|
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In thinking of the internet and the many devices connected to it, these |
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account for approximately 2-4% of global greenhouse emissions, which |
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only promise to double by 2025.^[^6]^ Data centres and vast server farms |
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(where data is stored and transmitted) draw more than 80% of their |
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energy from fossil fuel power stations. Online video alone -- porn, |
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Netflix, YouTube, Zoom -- generated 60% of the world's total data flows |
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before covid19 hit. A Google search uses as much energy as cooking an |
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egg or boiling water in an electric kettle.^[^7]^ Yearly emails for work |
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(and not accounting for spam) have been calculated to be equal in terms |
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of CO2 emissions to driving 320 kilometres.^[^8]^ These numbers have |
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likely gone up considerably since the pandemic.^[^9]^ This way of living |
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wasn't sustainable then, and it certainly isn't now. |
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There are search engines (eg. Ecosia^[^10]^) and add-ons (eg. |
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Carbonalyser by The Shift Project,^[^11]^ green-algorithms.org^[^12]^) |
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that help measure user impacts on the environment, but these miss |
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addressing the bigger questions -- such as moving away from confronting |
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personal use to the systemic, material, and ideological issues baked |
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into the internet. Why is the internet like this? The question is more |
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political than it is purely technological. It's more emotional, even, |
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than it is political. Because we've drifted so far away from |
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understanding nature as inherent to human and non-human wellbeing alike, |
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towards unrelenting and exploitative capitalism and extractivism, it |
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means we now have these massively entangled systems that reinforce one |
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another, generate profit for the very few, but in the end benefit |
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nothing and nobody.^[^13]^ These systems are harder to abolish or undo, |
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so instead we turn to solutions that lessen their impacts, and we |
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consider the rest inevitable -- or worse, natural. We might, for |
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example, shift data centers to cooler climates to save on cooling costs, |
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we might develop more efficient software, we might offer carbon |
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offsetting and plant trees, but none of these technofixes reach the |
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heart of the our current predicament: our solutions and our problems |
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originate from the same short-sighted, greed-driven, competitive, and |
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market-driven agendas that caused this global deadly pandemic in the |
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first place. |
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In 2020, we are generating 50 million tons worldwide of electronic |
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waste, with an annual growth of 5%.^[^14]^ This means that we produce |
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e-waste at three times the rate that humans reproduce. Much e-waste is |
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toxic and severely impacts land, water, plants, animals, and humans. |
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This damage is permanent. At the other end of the supply chain, fields |
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of wheat and corn have become lakes of toxic sludge to accommodate the |
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rare earth mining industry.^[^15]^ From Mongolia to China to the Congo, |
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people labour in dangerous conditions, mining through the ore-laden mud |
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to find rare minerals to power our devices. Elsewhere, people work |
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endless shifts to assemble computers, phones, tablets. It should be no |
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surprise then that the internet that connects this all is toxic too, |
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evidenced by both the work of content moderators who filter the |
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internet, and the shady tactics used by Big Tech to evade taxes to get |
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filthy rich off the backs of this global human-powered machine. As Ron |
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Deibert put it recently in his 2020 CBC Massey Lectures, "If we continue |
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on this path of unbridled consumption and planned obsolescence, we are |
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doomed."^[^16]^ |
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So we can either become extinct from the repercussions of our centuries |
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old destructive neoliberal colonial institutions, as the planet pushes |
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back with more pandemics, storms, and violence, or we can get together |
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and admit to our failures as colonisers. These failures tap into |
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|
something profound, deeply broken, about what settlers have historically |
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|
valued and continue to enact. We are living largely in the dark |
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fantasies of ghosts -- and these old, settler ideas haunt and break us. |
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We can imagine better. We can make other decisions. We can tune our |
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emotions to move from awareness to anxiety to action. We return public |
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lands to Indigenous peoples. We defund police and dismantle white |
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supremacy. We transform ourselves, and our communication systems will |
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follow. |
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[^1]: [*https://www.convenience.org/Media/Daily/2020/May/1/6-Snack-Sales-Soar-During-Pandemic\_Marketing*](https://www.convenience.org/Media/Daily/2020/May/1/6-Snack-Sales-Soar-During-Pandemic_Marketing) |
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[*https://news.italianfood.net/2020/04/02/pre-sliced-packaged-charcuterie-partly-offsets-pandemic-blow/*](https://news.italianfood.net/2020/04/02/pre-sliced-packaged-charcuterie-partly-offsets-pandemic-blow/) |
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[*https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/16078-the-snack-trends-predicted-to-persist-post-pandemic*](https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/16078-the-snack-trends-predicted-to-persist-post-pandemic) |
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[^2]: [*https://nypost.com/2020/04/13/americans-are-handling-coronavirus-pandemic-by-binging-on-snacks/*](https://nypost.com/2020/04/13/americans-are-handling-coronavirus-pandemic-by-binging-on-snacks/) |
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[*https://www.herworld.com/gallery/life/wellness/overeating-binge-eating-covid19-pandemic-work-home/*](https://www.herworld.com/gallery/life/wellness/overeating-binge-eating-covid19-pandemic-work-home/) |
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[^3]: [*https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/coronavirus-shutdowns-have-unintended-climate-benefits-n1161921*](https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/coronavirus-shutdowns-have-unintended-climate-benefits-n1161921) |
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[^4]: [*https://www.planetofstudents.com/blog/social-awareness/effects-of-lockdown-on-the-environment/*](https://www.planetofstudents.com/blog/social-awareness/effects-of-lockdown-on-the-environment/) |
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[^5]: [*https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmanuelfelton/coronavirus-meme-nature-is-healing-we-are-the-virus*](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmanuelfelton/coronavirus-meme-nature-is-healing-we-are-the-virus) |
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[^6]: [*https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think*](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think) |
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[^7]: [*https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/jan/12/carbon-emissions-google*](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/jan/12/carbon-emissions-google) |
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[^8]: [*https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think*](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think) |
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and |
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[*https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-55002423*](https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-55002423) |
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[^9]: [*https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/unsustainable-use-online-video/*](https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/unsustainable-use-online-video/) |
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[^10]: [*https://www.ecosia.org/*](https://www.ecosia.org/) |
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[^11]: [*https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/carbonalyser/*](https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/carbonalyser/) |
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[^12]: [*http://www.green-algorithms.org/*](http://www.green-algorithms.org/) |
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[^13]: [*https://landback.org/manifesto/*](https://landback.org/manifesto/) |
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[^14]: [*https://www.thebalancesmb.com/e-waste-recycling-facts-and-figures-2878189*](https://www.thebalancesmb.com/e-waste-recycling-facts-and-figures-2878189) |
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[^15]: [*https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html*](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html) |
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[^16]: [*https://munkschool.exposure.co/a-qa-with-ron-deibert*](https://munkschool.exposure.co/a-qa-with-ron-deibert) |
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@ -1,6 +1,5 @@ |
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Title: Infrastructure mega corridors: a way out (or in) to the crisis? |
Title: Infrastructure mega corridors: a way out (or in) to the crisis? |
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Author: Recommon |
Author: Recommon.org |
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Category: Articles |
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*"Infrastructure mega corridors: a way out (or in) to the crisis?"* |
*"Infrastructure mega corridors: a way out (or in) to the crisis?"* |
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@ -1,6 +1,7 @@ |
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Title: The Philosophy of Warnings |
Title: The Philosophy of Warnings |
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Author: Santiago Zabala |
Author: Santiago Zabala |
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Category: Articles |
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<div class="colophon"> |
<div class="colophon"> |
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<p> Published by: <br> Editing: <br> Design <br> Paper <br> Typeface <br> |
<p> Published by: <br> Editing: <br> Design <br> Paper <br> Typeface <br> |
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</p><p id="colophon_right"> Sponsors: <br> Thanks: <br> Other <br> |
</p><p id="colophon_right"> Sponsors: <br> Thanks: <br> Other <br> |
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@ -1,25 +0,0 @@ |
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<pre> |
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,,lopes""""Nouri,, |
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,nve""' `""sh, |
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,ine" "ing, |
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,l" "ne, |
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,ai" _,,yay"""Base,,_ "tw, |
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,m" ,al"' `"d, "o, |
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,e' ,v" "o, `r, |
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,h' i" "n `k, |
|
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t' t' ,gPPRg, `w `i |
|
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h s dP' `Yb h s |
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g e 8) (8 i t |
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u f Yb dP r h |
|
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o o, "8ggg8" ,p e |
|
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r, mr oo ,t |
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`h, "ea ls" ,i' |
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`t, "th,_ _,an" ,t' |
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`ng `""dtornados""' le' |
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`uti oft' |
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"rib hep" |
|
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`"ist, ,ubl"' |
|
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`"ared, ,icat"' |
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``""ionthatwe""'' |
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</pre> |
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@ -1,142 +0,0 @@ |
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Title: The Pandemic\'s Dark Cloud |
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Author: Mél Hogan |
|
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Category: Articles |
|
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|
|
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# The Pandemic\'s Dark Cloud |
|
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|
|
||||
As the pandemic settled into consciousness across the globe, humans |
|
||||
devolved. People in countries where the response to COVID-19 was most |
|
||||
mismanaged started to snack a lot.[^1] Pre-sliced packaged charcuterie. |
|
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Ritz crackers. Oreo cookies. In their growing helplessness, people also |
|
||||
sharply increased their consumption of alcohol, especially women in the |
|
||||
US.[^2] For some it was drugs. Those lucky enough to keep their job |
|
||||
doubled down on work, staying at their stations or desks for longer |
|
||||
hours -- part avoidance and part stuckness into systems that could offer |
|
||||
no other plan. |
|
||||
|
|
||||
The dread by now is cumulative. Pick your pain: covid19, white |
|
||||
supremacy, climate catastrophe. People are reaching new levels of |
|
||||
"doomscrolling" on social media, playing online video games, and |
|
||||
"binge-watching" Netflix as ways to pass the time, waiting on the virus |
|
||||
to run its course, or for politicians to make a plan. As things shut |
|
||||
down, Zoom quickly took over as the way to communicate at a safe social |
|
||||
distance. Education quickly became clicking at screens. No more shopping |
|
||||
in person meant ordering by way of interfaces. All of these screens more |
|
||||
or less allowed things to continue, if not as normal, as a viable |
|
||||
alternative in the meantime. It remains to be seen if this online world |
|
||||
we've adopted so quickly is the new normal, and here to stay, or if |
|
||||
it'll reflect to us the inefficiencies of how we lived before and save |
|
||||
us from ourselves. Or, maybe it will call into question the terrible |
|
||||
inequities that are only made more evident by this pandemic. |
|
||||
|
|
||||
By April, the news media were already reporting that lockdowns had meant |
|
||||
cleaner air and clearer water.[^3] Satellite images showed less |
|
||||
pollution over China and the US. Animals were found roaming freely in |
|
||||
different parts of India.[^4] "Nature is healing" became a popular meme |
|
||||
celebrating the lessening of human impact and nature's recovery.[^5] But |
|
||||
were the effects of lockdown, or quarantine, of humans being trapped in |
|
||||
their homes, and of doing everything online, truly a more sustainable |
|
||||
way of going about life? Had the turn to "the cloud" proven to be the |
|
||||
weightless way forward? Social isolation and disinformation propagation |
|
||||
problems aside, could the internet become a tool to inadvertently save |
|
||||
the environment? |
|
||||
|
|
||||
In thinking of the internet and the many devices connected to it, these |
|
||||
account for approximately 2-4% of global greenhouse emissions, which |
|
||||
only promise to double by 2025.[^6] Data centres and vast server farms |
|
||||
(where data is stored and transmitted) draw more than 80% of their |
|
||||
energy from fossil fuel power stations. Online video alone -- porn, |
|
||||
Netflix, YouTube, Zoom -- generated 60% of the world's total data flows |
|
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before covid19 hit. A Google search uses as much energy as cooking an |
|
||||
egg or boiling water in an electric kettle.[^7] Yearly emails for work |
|
||||
(and not accounting for spam) have been calculated to be equal in terms |
|
||||
of CO2 emissions to driving 320 kilometres.[^8] These numbers have |
|
||||
likely gone up considerably since the pandemic.[^9] This way of living |
|
||||
wasn't sustainable then, and it certainly isn't now. |
|
||||
|
|
||||
There are search engines (eg. Ecosia[^10]) and add-ons (eg. Carbonalyser |
|
||||
by The Shift Project,[^11] green-algorithms.org[^12]) that help measure |
|
||||
user impacts on the environment, but these miss addressing the bigger |
|
||||
questions -- such as moving away from confronting personal use to the |
|
||||
systemic, material, and ideological issues baked into the internet. Why |
|
||||
is the internet like this? The question is more political than it is |
|
||||
purely technological. It's more emotional, even, than it is political. |
|
||||
Because we've drifted so far away from understanding nature as inherent |
|
||||
to humans and non-humans alike, towards unrelenting and exploitative |
|
||||
capitalism and extractivism, it means we now have these massively |
|
||||
entangled systems that reinforce one another, generate profit for the |
|
||||
very few, but in the end benefit nothing and nobody.[^13] These systems |
|
||||
are harder to abolish and undo, so instead we turn to solutions that |
|
||||
lessen their impacts, and we consider the rest inevitable -- or worse, |
|
||||
natural. We might, for example, shift data centers to cooler climates to |
|
||||
save on cooling costs, we might develop more efficient software, we |
|
||||
might offer carbon offsetting and plant trees, but none of these |
|
||||
technofixes reach the heart of the our current predicament: our |
|
||||
solutions and our problems originate from the same short-sighted, |
|
||||
greed-driven, competitive, and market-driven agendas that caused this |
|
||||
global deadly pandemic in the first place. |
|
||||
|
|
||||
In 2020, we are generating 50 million tons worldwide of electronic |
|
||||
waste, with an annual growth of 5%.[^14] This means that we produce |
|
||||
e-waste at three times the rate that humans reproduce. Much e-waste is |
|
||||
toxic and severely impacts land, water, plants, animals, and humans. |
|
||||
This damage is permanent. At the other end of the supply chain, fields |
|
||||
of wheat and corn have become lakes of toxic sludge to accommodate the |
|
||||
rare earth mining industry.[^15] From Mongolia to China to the Congo, |
|
||||
people labour in dangerous conditions, mining through the ore-laden mud |
|
||||
to find rare minerals to power our devices. Elsewhere, people work |
|
||||
endless shifts to assemble computers, phones, tablets. It should be no |
|
||||
surprise then that the internet that connects this all is toxic too, |
|
||||
evidenced by both the work of content moderators who filter the |
|
||||
internet, and the shady tactics used by Big Tech to evade taxes to get |
|
||||
filthy rich off the backs of this global human-powered machine. As Ron |
|
||||
Deibert put it recently in his CBC Massey Lectures, "If we continue on |
|
||||
this path of unbridled consumption and planned obsolescence, we are |
|
||||
doomed."[^16] |
|
||||
|
|
||||
So we can either become extinct from the repercussions of our centuries |
|
||||
old destructive neoliberal colonial institutions, as the planet pushes |
|
||||
back with more pandemics, storms, and violence, or we can get together |
|
||||
and admit to our failures as colonisers. These failures tap into |
|
||||
something profound, deeply broken, about what settlers have historically |
|
||||
valued and continue to enact. We are living largely in the dark |
|
||||
fantasies of ghosts -- and these old, settler ideas haunt and break us. |
|
||||
We can imagine better. We can make other decisions. We can tune our |
|
||||
emotions to move from awareness to anxiety to action. We return public |
|
||||
lands to Indigenous peoples. We defund and dismantle white supremacy. We |
|
||||
transform ourselves, and our communication systems will follow. |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^1]: [[https://www.convenience.org/Media/Daily/2020/May/1/6-Snack-Sales-Soar-During-Pandemic\_Marketing]{.underline}](https://www.convenience.org/Media/Daily/2020/May/1/6-Snack-Sales-Soar-During-Pandemic_Marketing) |
|
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[[https://news.italianfood.net/2020/04/02/pre-sliced-packaged-charcuterie-partly-offsets-pandemic-blow/]{.underline}](https://news.italianfood.net/2020/04/02/pre-sliced-packaged-charcuterie-partly-offsets-pandemic-blow/) |
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[[https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/16078-the-snack-trends-predicted-to-persist-post-pandemic]{.underline}](https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/16078-the-snack-trends-predicted-to-persist-post-pandemic) |
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[^2]: [[https://nypost.com/2020/04/13/americans-are-handling-coronavirus-pandemic-by-binging-on-snacks/]{.underline}](https://nypost.com/2020/04/13/americans-are-handling-coronavirus-pandemic-by-binging-on-snacks/) |
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[[https://www.herworld.com/gallery/life/wellness/overeating-binge-eating-covid19-pandemic-work-home/]{.underline}](https://www.herworld.com/gallery/life/wellness/overeating-binge-eating-covid19-pandemic-work-home/) |
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[^3]: [[https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/coronavirus-shutdowns-have-unintended-climate-benefits-n1161921]{.underline}](https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/coronavirus-shutdowns-have-unintended-climate-benefits-n1161921) |
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[^4]: [[https://www.planetofstudents.com/blog/social-awareness/effects-of-lockdown-on-the-environment/]{.underline}](https://www.planetofstudents.com/blog/social-awareness/effects-of-lockdown-on-the-environment/) |
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[^5]: [[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmanuelfelton/coronavirus-meme-nature-is-healing-we-are-the-virus]{.underline}](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmanuelfelton/coronavirus-meme-nature-is-healing-we-are-the-virus) |
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[^6]: [[https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think]{.underline}](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think) |
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[^7]: [[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/jan/12/carbon-emissions-google]{.underline}](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/jan/12/carbon-emissions-google) |
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[^8]: [[https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think]{.underline}](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think) |
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[^9]: [[https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/unsustainable-use-online-video/]{.underline}](https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/unsustainable-use-online-video/) |
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[^10]: [[https://www.ecosia.org/]{.underline}](https://www.ecosia.org/) |
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[^11]: [[https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/carbonalyser/]{.underline}](https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/carbonalyser/) |
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[^12]: [[http://www.green-algorithms.org/]{.underline}](http://www.green-algorithms.org/) |
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[^13]: [[https://landback.org/manifesto/]{.underline}](https://landback.org/manifesto/) |
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[^14]: [[https://www.thebalancesmb.com/e-waste-recycling-facts-and-figures-2878189]{.underline}](https://www.thebalancesmb.com/e-waste-recycling-facts-and-figures-2878189) |
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[^15]: [[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html]{.underline}](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html) |
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[^16]: [[https://munkschool.exposure.co/a-qa-with-ron-deibert]{.underline}](https://munkschool.exposure.co/a-qa-with-ron-deibert) |
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Title: About |
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# A Nourishing Network |
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*A Nourishing Network *is a publishing project that aims at documenting |
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and circulating current research done by a network of artists, activists |
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and programmers that collaborate with the Austrian net culture |
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initiative *servus.at.* Especially in this moment of reduced mobility |
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and physical encounters, the publication stimulates the circulation of |
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materials and their further development in a community that usually |
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gathers in small-sized events and festivals. |
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The project is a continuation of *Art Meets Radical Openness*--*AMRO* |
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in short--a bi-yearly festival organized by servus.at in Linz |
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([https://radical-openness.org](https://radical-openness.org/)). The |
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festival creates space for discussions around the current impact of |
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internet technologies and platforms. It aims to imagine possible (real) |
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sustainable models for computational infrastructures, as an alternative |
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to the growing techno-solutionist trend. |
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*A Nourishing Network* is produced as a hybrid publishing process |
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realised by Manetta Berends and Alice Strete from the Rotterdam |
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initiative Varia ([https://varia.zone](https://varia.zone/)). |
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The project emerged as a response to the following three departure |
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points: |
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**Another lost occasion for degrowth?** |
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At the beginning many thought that the spring lockdowns of 2020 might |
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have been a great opportunity to embrace less impactful lifestyles and |
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production models. As soon as the measurements loosened up, the level of |
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consumption rose to pre-lockdowns levels. Was the emerging environmental awareness overshadowed by a „sort of" return to normality? |
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**Re-centralization or blooming alternatives?** |
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During the first wave of lockdown, data-avid proprietary services gained |
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a more central role within online ecosystems and daily life. Faced with |
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this new context, communities dealing with free and open source software |
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continued to work on alternative platform models. What happened? And |
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what could be further explored? |
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**Artdiversity loss: is now Zoom the best art gallery 2020?** |
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In 2020 many cultural initiatives were forced to shift towards online |
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videocalls, where often the materiality of bodies and matter is |
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deprioritised. As the spectrum of technical possibilities offered by |
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(centralised) digital platforms currently shape and actively format the |
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field of the arts, how can we make space to experiment with alternative |
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formats? |
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## How the nourishing network works: |
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The publication is in itself an experiment: one in peer-to-peer |
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publishing starting from the *feed* as a potentially multi-directional |
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circulation device. Through web-syndication protocols and mail art |
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practices, this publication engages with complex circulation flows, |
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thereby exploring the social dynamics of such networked forms of |
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publishing. Borrowing from food terminology, the activity of |
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*nourishing* translates into an act of continuous care within the |
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network and for the network itself. |
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A subscription to the digital and/or postal feed, nourishes her |
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subscribers with a stream of essays. The feeds are available at |
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[https://](https://a-nourishing-network.radical-openness.org/)[a-nourishing-network.radical-openness.org](https://a-nourishing-network.radical-openness.org/) |
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and can be digested in different ways: as RSS, Atom and ActivityPub |
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streams, or as a stream of physical publications which are distributed |
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through a "postal feed" throughout Europe. |
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## How to circulate within the Nourishing Network? |
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The project is an invitation to stimulate circulation by further |
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disseminating the material in online and offline ways. Each subscriber |
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to the postal feed will receive two copies of the publication in order |
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to extend the circulation network with one step -- by sending it to |
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someone who might appreciate it. Similarly, the feed is prepared to |
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circulate in online networks. |
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|
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Finally, to enforce feedback and more spontaneous responses to the |
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articles, we are open for contributions from the community of readers. |
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@ -1,5 +0,0 @@ |
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Title: First thing |
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Date: 2020-11-13 16:46 |
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Category: Projections |
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First website page! |
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Loading…
Reference in new issue