n observation during the first Corona lockdown, on the topic of doing nothing: It was astounding that already after the first few days after the outside world was locked away, numerous texts, commentaries, and newsfeeds started being circulated that suspiciously and hyperactively told of all the things that could finally be done in the sudden nothingness. Going from one hyperactivity to the next taking place mainly on the net. I just remembered a study that was taken in 2014. The setting was straight forward, the question was simply: Do people who are forced into doing nothing actually prefer doing nothing, or would they opt for a (weak) electric shock that THEY GIVE TO THEMSELVES? Many of those who took part of the study chose the electric shock, which was slightly surprising. During a small, non-representative survey among friends, I came to the same conclusion, or rather, the decision for the electric shock came up more often than expected. And yes, it was accompanied by laughter. But it was there. Maybe this says something about the human condition, the human need for "something". Already in the 17^th^ century *Blaise Pascal* said: "The tragedy of humans is that they are incapable of remaining calmly in a room". Blaise Pascal obviously had a good sense for people, maybe even for a future Conditio Humana organized around electricity. Thinking about all those experiments based on electric shocks à la Milgram, the question could be asked why the electric shock is such a popular method for scientific study, and yet the answer to the question why human beings have such a propensity towards torment could be simpler and more complicated at the same time: Because otherwise EVERYTHING feels LIKE NOTHING.
n observation during the first Corona lockdown, on the topic of doing nothing: It was astounding that already after the first few days after the outside world was locked away, numerous texts, commentaries, and newsfeeds started being circulated that suspiciously and hyperactively told of all the things that could finally be done in the sudden nothingness. Going from one hyperactivity to the next taking place mainly on the net. I just remembered a study that was taken in 2014. The setting was straight forward, the question was simply: Do people who are forced into doing nothing actually prefer doing nothing, or would they opt for a (weak) electric shock that THEY GIVE TO THEMSELVES? Many of those who took part of the study chose the electric shock, which was slightly surprising. During a small, non-representative survey among friends, I came to the same conclusion, or rather, the decision for the electric shock came up more often than expected. And yes, it was accompanied by laughter. But it was there. Maybe this says something about the human condition, the human need for "something". Already in the 17<sup>th</sup> century *Blaise Pascal* said: "The tragedy of humans is that they are incapable of remaining calmly in a room". Blaise Pascal obviously had a good sense for people, maybe even for a future Conditio Humana organized around electricity. Thinking about all those experiments based on electric shocks à la Milgram, the question could be asked why the electric shock is such a popular method for scientific study, and yet the answer to the question why human beings have such a propensity towards torment could be simpler and more complicated at the same time: Because otherwise EVERYTHING feels LIKE NOTHING.
I am currently working on an SF-exploitation story that begins with early studies on electricity. Historical examples include rich kids from the early 19^th^ century who had electrostatic generators to fulfil their inquisitive pleasures. These machines produce static electricity in order to, e.g. get children's hair to stand on end. As a fledging discipline, science simultaneously -- in the late 18^th^, early 19^th^ century -- set up experimental arrangements on "animalistic electricity", which describes the experiments done with frogs, snails, dogs, oxen, etc (Galvanism). The high point of the research on the electric force of life was the grey area Galvani's nephew, a certain Giovanni Aldini, wandered through, who among other things tried to revive a dead body with electricity. He obtained the body of an executed murderer and hooked it up to a current. A description of the experiment reads as follows: "a mighty, convulsive breath was triggered. The eyes opened, the lips quivered \...". And so on. This was not only absolutely thrilling, but an officially mandated surgical attendant was supposedly so shocked by this that he died in his home shortly thereafter. It was especially these experiments (and the public discourse around them due to the anti-vivisection movement in the late 19^th^ century) that have given science a lasting image problem -- it was seen as a chamber of horror. The execution of a grown elephant on the public "electric chair"around 1900 symbolically completes the picture: After all the small animals, this remained the biggest example of execution through high voltage during the so-called electricity wars in the late 19^th^ century (the fight between direct and alternating current, Edison vs Tesla). This electrocution took place as part of the "animal trials" that were still not unusual at that time: The circus elephant Topsy had killed a human who had been tormenting the animal with a burning cigarette. The execution of Topsy then took place amidst a huge electricity company propaganda campaign and an entertainment complex. In the list of Edison's coin-operated Kinetoscopes the filmed event bore the title: "ELECTROCUTING AN ELEPHANT. Topsy, the famous 'Baby' elephant, was electrocuted at Coney Island on January 4, 1903. We secured an excellent picture of the execution. \[\...\]"
I am currently working on an SF-exploitation story that begins with early studies on electricity. Historical examples include rich kids from the early 19<sup>th</sup> century who had electrostatic generators to fulfil their inquisitive pleasures. These machines produce static electricity in order to, e.g. get children's hair to stand on end. As a fledging discipline, science simultaneously -- in the late 18<sup>th</sup>, early 19<sup>th</sup> century -- set up experimental arrangements on "animalistic electricity", which describes the experiments done with frogs, snails, dogs, oxen, etc (Galvanism). The high point of the research on the electric force of life was the grey area Galvani's nephew, a certain Giovanni Aldini, wandered through, who among other things tried to revive a dead body with electricity. He obtained the body of an executed murderer and hooked it up to a current. A description of the experiment reads as follows: "a mighty, convulsive breath was triggered. The eyes opened, the lips quivered \...". And so on. This was not only absolutely thrilling, but an officially mandated surgical attendant was supposedly so shocked by this that he died in his home shortly thereafter. It was especially these experiments (and the public discourse around them due to the anti-vivisection movement in the late 19<sup>th</sup> century) that have given science a lasting image problem -- it was seen as a chamber of horror. The execution of a grown elephant on the public "electric chair"around 1900 symbolically completes the picture: After all the small animals, this remained the biggest example of execution through high voltage during the so-called electricity wars in the late 19<sup>th</sup> century (the fight between direct and alternating current, Edison vs Tesla). This electrocution took place as part of the "animal trials" that were still not unusual at that time: The circus elephant Topsy had killed a human who had been tormenting the animal with a burning cigarette. The execution of Topsy then took place amidst a huge electricity company propaganda campaign and an entertainment complex. In the list of Edison's coin-operated Kinetoscopes the filmed event bore the title: "ELECTROCUTING AN ELEPHANT. Topsy, the famous 'Baby' elephant, was electrocuted at Coney Island on January 4, 1903. We secured an excellent picture of the execution. \[\...\]"
<small>Wikimedia Commons / A frame from the 74 second short documentary film *Electrocuting an Elephant*, produced by Edwin S. Porter or Jacob Blair Smith for the Edison Manufacturing Company, 1903.</small>
This goes to show that next to the human horror of nothingness, as well as the need for amusement (electrostatic generators) there is another short but highly intense story to be told, that remains unseen and focusses on electricity and death in numerous aspects. At least that is the plot line for the SF-exploitation that I am working on: It is set in an undefined future and is about weak shocks of a net-"entity", that brings the currency "E°mo" out of human beings. Humans feed the net with the currency time and emotion, they have moved from a regular raw material of tapped data resources, to a controllable, fully exploitable body to the resource. The protagonist Nik is autistic, something that seems to have become normal in this later society ("Autistic people do not feel too little, but rather too much"). However, over the course of the story Nik becomes a "hyper-feeler" more and more. Through so-called "emotional sensations", he is able to feel even the slightest sensations on the "ladder of realms" that quasi represents the inter-applications of the net through an electro-magnetic trigger system. This includes the data of its human hosts, but also all the non-human scripts of nature, and in one chapter also that of animals. The things that "hyper-feelers"then perceive in the entity always smells (generally speaking) slightly burned and faintly dead on the one hand, and on the other, Nik manifests a collective yet unique sensation in his own body from a form of left over emotion that acts as a continued counter script of pain. Under the name "Alone in the Room: Interior 1 - ∞" he sends empathy shocks through the system. At first, to resist. Later on he realizes that he is actually keeping the entity alive through his actions. As it permanently is in danger of collapsing into the systemic death of uniformity, and must keep itself afloat by expanding with more and newer datasets. So-called "InfluencerMs", immediate E°mo-executors, show up with every induced counter script imaginable. However, in the strangest manner possible, after they show up everything remains the same. This will represent the riddle of consciousness per se at the end. Enough spoilers. However, let me say this last thing: Of course war is not eradicated in the future, and of course beneath the surface the bone breaking mechanisms of techno-capitalism keep on turning.
@ -28,4 +32,3 @@ This text reaches far into the past, into our reality, into a dystopia, and so f
<!--**Picture Subtext**: Wikimedia Commons / A frame from the 74 second short documentary film*Electrocuting an Elephant*, produced by Edwin S. Porter or Jacob Blair Smith for the Edison Manufacturing Company, 1903. -->
@ -86,7 +86,9 @@ Despite the lack of reliable statistics, community networks seem to be rather su
Guifi.net provides internet access to individuals, companies, administrations and universities. In principle, the network is installed, powered and maintained by its users, although volunteer teams and even commercial installers are present to help. Some nodes and backbone upgrades have been succesfully crowdfunded by indirect beneficiaries of the network.[^8][^22]
<small>A node in the Spanish Guifi community network.</small>
## Performance of Low-tech Networks
@ -97,9 +99,9 @@ However, the low-tech networks that distribute internet access to a large user b
Therefore, the worst-case average bandwidth available per machine is approximately 1.9 kbps, which is slow even in comparison to a dial-up connection (56 kbps). And this can be considered a really good connectivity compared to typical rural settings in poor countries.[^26] To make matters worse, such networks often have to deal with an intermittent power supply.
.]({static}/images/kris-de-decker_how-to-build-a-low-tech-internet-5.jpeg)
<small>Wireless links in the Spanish Guifi network. Credit.</small>
<small>Wireless links in the Spanish Guifi network. [Credit](https://iuliinet.github.io/presentazione_ottobre_2014/img/barcellona.jpg).</small>
Under these circumstances, even the most common internet applications have poor performance, or don't work at all. The communication model of the internet is based on a set of network assumptions, called the TCP/IP protocol suite. These include the existence of a bi-directional end-to-end path between the source (for example a website's server) and the destination (the user's computer), short round-trip delays, and low error rates.
@ -182,42 +184,40 @@ Such a hybrid system of online and offline applications would remain a very powe
**DIY**: Wireless networking in the developing world (Third Edition) is a free book about designing, implementing and maintaining low-cost wireless networks. Available in English, French, and Spanish. <http://wndw.net/book.html#readBook>
----------------------------------
[^1]: Connecting the unwired world with balloons, satellites, lasers & drones, Slashdot, 2015. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/09/03/214256/connecting-the-unwired-world-with-balloons-satellites-lasers-drones
[^2]: A QoS-aware dynamic bandwidth allocation scheme for multi-hop WiFi-based long distance networks, Iftekhar Hussain et al., 2015, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13638-015-0352-z#/page-1
[^1]: Connecting the unwired world with balloons, satellites, lasers & drones, Slashdot, 2015. <https://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/09/03/214256/connecting-the-unwired-world-with-balloons-satellites-lasers-drones>
[^2]: A QoS-aware dynamic bandwidth allocation scheme for multi-hop WiFi-based long distance networks, Iftekhar Hussain et al., 2015, <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13638-015-0352-z#/page-1>
[^4]: This link could only be established thanks to the height of the endpoints (4,200 and 1,500 km) and the flatness of the middle ground. The curvature of the Earth makes longer point-to-point WiFi-links difficult to achieve because line of sight between two points is required.
[^5]: Radio waves occupy a volume around the optical line, which must be unemcumbered from obstacles. This volume is known as the Fresnel ellipsoid and its size grows with the distance between the two end points and with the wavelength of the signal, which is in turn inversely proportional to the frequency. Thus, it is required to leave extra "elbow room" for the Fresnel zone. [9]
[^6]: A Brief History of the Tegola Project, Tegola Project, retrieved October 2015 http://www.tegola.org.uk/tegola-history.html
[^7]: WiLDNet: Design and Implementation of High Performance WiFi based Long Distance Networks (PDF), Rabin Patra et al., 2007, http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/docs/wireless/wild_multihop.pdf
[^8]: Topology Patterns of a Community Network: Guifi.net (PDF), Davide Vega et al., 2012, http://dsg.ac.upc.edu/sites/default/files/1569633605.pdf
[^9]: Global Access to the Internet for All, internet draft, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), 2015, https://trac.tools.ietf.org/group/irtf/trac/wiki/gaia
[^10]: This is what happened to Afghanistan's JLINK network when funding for the network's satellite link ran dry in 2012. https://www.wired.com/2012/05/jlink/
[^11]: The case for technology in developing regions (PDF), Eric Brewer et al., 2005, https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mattkam/lab/publications/Computer2005.pdf
[^15]: VillageCell: Cost Effective Cellular Connectivity in Rural Areas (PDF), Abhinav Anand et al., 2012, https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~pejovicv/docs/Anand12ICTD.pdf
[^6]: A Brief History of the Tegola Project, Tegola Project, retrieved October 2015 <http://www.tegola.org.uk/tegola-history.html>
[^7]: WiLDNet: Design and Implementation of High Performance WiFi based Long Distance Networks (PDF), Rabin Patra et al., 2007, <http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/docs/wireless/wild_multihop.pdf>
[^8]: Topology Patterns of a Community Network: Guifi.net (PDF), Davide Vega et al., 2012, <http://dsg.ac.upc.edu/sites/default/files/1569633605.pdf>
[^9]: Global Access to the Internet for All, internet draft, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), 2015, <https://trac.tools.ietf.org/group/irtf/trac/wiki/gaia>
[^10]: This is what happened to Afghanistan's JLINK network when funding for the network's satellite link ran dry in 2012. <https://www.wired.com/2012/05/jlink/>
[^11]: The case for technology in developing regions (PDF), Eric Brewer et al., 2005, <https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mattkam/lab/publications/Computer2005.pdf>
[^15]: VillageCell: Cost Effective Cellular Connectivity in Rural Areas (PDF), Abhinav Anand et al., 2012, <https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~pejovicv/docs/Anand12ICTD.pdf>
[^16]: Deployment and Extensio of a Converged WiMAX/WiFi Network for Dwesa Community Area South Africa (PDF), N. Ndlovu et al., 2009, citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.452.7357&rep=rep1&type=pdf
[^17]: "A telemedicine network optimized for long distances in the Amazonian jungle of Peru" (PDF), Carlos Rey-Moreno, ExtremeCom '11, September 2011, http://www.ehas.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Extremecomm_sig_ISBN.pdf
[^18]: "Telemedicine networks of EHAS Foundation in Latin America", Ignacio Prieto-Egido et al., in "Frontiers in Public Health", October 15, 2014. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4197650/
[^19]: "The design of a wireless solar-powered router for rural environments isolated from health facilities" (PDF), Francisco Javier Simo Reigadas et al., in "IEEE Wireless Communications", June 2008, https://burjcdigital.urjc.es/bitstream/handle/10115/2293/THE%20DESIGN%20OF%20A%20WIRELESS%20SOLAR-POWERED-2008.pdf?sequence=1
[^20]: On a long wireless link for rural telemedicine in Malawi (PDF), M. Zennaro et al., 2008, http://users.ictp.it/~mzennaro/Malawi.pdf
[^21]: A Survey of Delay- and Disruption-Tolerant Networking Applications, Artemios G. Voyiatzis, 2012, http://www.jie-online.org/index.php/jie/article/view/91
[^22]: Supporting Cloud Deployment in the Guifi Community Network (PDF), Roger Baig et al., 2013, https://web.archive.org/web/20171204033825/https://www.sics.se/~amir/files/download/papers/guifi.pdf
[^23]: A Case for Research with and on Community Networks (PDF), Bart Braem et.al, 2013, http://www.sigcomm.org/sites/default/files/ccr/papers/2013/July/2500098-2500108.pdf
[^24]: There are smaller networks in Scotland (Tegola, http://www.tegola.org.uk/), Slovenia (wlan slovenija, https://wlan-si.net/), Belgium (Wireless Antwerpen, http://www.wirelessbelgie.be/), and the Netherlands (Wireless Leiden, https://www.wirelessleiden.nl), among others. Australia has Melbourne Wireless (https://web.archive.org/web/20201111204529/http://melbourne.wireless.org.au/). In Latin America, numerous examples exists, such as Bogota Mesh (https://www.facebook.com/BogotaMesh) (Colombia) and Monte Video Libre (http://picandocodigo.net/2008/montevideolibre-redes-libres-en-montevideo/) (Uruguay). Some of these networks are interconnected. This is the case for the Belgian and Dutch community networks, and for the Slovenian and Austrian networks. [8,22,23]
[^25]: Proxy performance analysis in a community wireless network, Pablo Pitarch Miguel, 2013, https://upcommons.upc.edu/handle/2099.1/19710
[^26]: RuralCafe: Web Search in the Rural Developing World (PDF), Jay Chen et al., 2009, http://www.ambuehler.ethz.ch/CDstore/www2009/proc/docs/p411.pdf
[^27]: A Delay-Tolerant Network Architecture for Challenged Networks (PDF), Kevin Fall, 2003, http://www.kevinfall.com/seipage/papers/p27-fall.pdf
[^28]: Delay- and Disruption-Tolerant Networks (DTNs) -- A Tutorial (version 2.0) (PDF), Forrest Warthman, 2012, http://ipnsig.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/DTN_Tutorial_v2.04.pdf
[^29]: Healthcare Supported by Data Mule Networks in Remote Communities of the Amazon Region, Mauro Margalho Coutinho et al., 2014, https://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2014/730760/
[^30]: First Mile Solutions' Daknet Takes Rural Communities Online (PDF), Carol Chyau and Jean-Francois Raymond, 2005, https://web.archive.org/web/20120126121011/www.firstmilesolutions.com/documents/FMS_Case_Study.pdf
[^31]: DakNet: A Road to Universal Broadband Connectivity (PDF), Amir Alexander Hasson et al., 2003, https://courses.media.mit.edu/2003fall/de/DakNet-Case.pdf
[^32]: DakNet: Architecture and Connectivity in Developing Nations (PDF), Madhuri Bhole, 2015, http://ijpret.com/publishedarticle/2015/4/IJPRET%20-%20ECN%20115.pdf
[^33]: Delay Tolerant Networks and Their Applications, Longxiang Gao et al., 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20190309195327/http://www.citeulike.org/user/tnhh/article/13517347
[^34]: Low-cost communication for rural internet kiosks using mechanical backhaul, A. Seth et al., 2006, https://people.csail.mit.edu/matei/papers/2006/mobicom_kiosks.pdf
[^35]: Searching the World Wide Web in Low-Connectivity Communities (PDF), William Thies et al., 2002, http://tek.sourceforge.net/papers/tek-www02.pdf
[^36]: Slow Search: Information Retrieval without Time Constraints (PDF), Jaime Teevan, 2013, https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~yubink/hcir2013.pdf
[^37]: Potential for Collaborative Caching and Prefetching in Largely-Disconnected Villages (PDF), Sibren Isaacman et al., 2008, https://mrmgroup.cs.princeton.edu/papers/isaacman-winsdr503.pdf
[^17]: "A telemedicine network optimized for long distances in the Amazonian jungle of Peru" (PDF), Carlos Rey-Moreno, ExtremeCom '11, September 2011, <http://www.ehas.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Extremecomm_sig_ISBN.pdf>
[^18]: "Telemedicine networks of EHAS Foundation in Latin America", Ignacio Prieto-Egido et al., in "Frontiers in Public Health", October 15, 2014. <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4197650/>
[^19]: "The design of a wireless solar-powered router for rural environments isolated from health facilities" (PDF), Francisco Javier Simo Reigadas et al., in "IEEE Wireless Communications", June 2008, <https://burjcdigital.urjc.es/bitstream/handle/10115/2293/THE%20DESIGN%20OF%20A%20WIRELESS%20SOLAR-POWERED-2008.pdf?sequence=1>
[^20]: On a long wireless link for rural telemedicine in Malawi (PDF), M. Zennaro et al., 2008, <http://users.ictp.it/~mzennaro/Malawi.pdf>
[^21]: A Survey of Delay- and Disruption-Tolerant Networking Applications, Artemios G. Voyiatzis, 2012, <http://www.jie-online.org/index.php/jie/article/view/91>
[^22]: Supporting Cloud Deployment in the Guifi Community Network (PDF), Roger Baig et al., 2013, <https://web.archive.org/web/20171204033825/https://www.sics.se/~amir/files/download/papers/guifi.pdf>
[^23]: A Case for Research with and on Community Networks (PDF), Bart Braem et.al, 2013, <http://www.sigcomm.org/sites/default/files/ccr/papers/2013/July/2500098-2500108.pdf>
[^24]: There are smaller networks in Scotland (Tegola, <http://www.tegola.org.uk/>), Slovenia (wlan slovenija, <https://wlan-si.net/>), Belgium (Wireless Antwerpen, <http://www.wirelessbelgie.be/>), and the Netherlands (Wireless Leiden, <https://www.wirelessleiden.nl>), among others. Australia has Melbourne Wireless (<https://web.archive.org/web/20201111204529/http://melbourne.wireless.org.au/>). In Latin America, numerous examples exists, such as Bogota Mesh (<https://www.facebook.com/BogotaMesh>) (Colombia) and Monte Video Libre (<http://picandocodigo.net/2008/montevideolibre-redes-libres-en-montevideo/>) (Uruguay). Some of these networks are interconnected. This is the case for the Belgian and Dutch community networks, and for the Slovenian and Austrian networks. [8,22,23]
[^25]: Proxy performance analysis in a community wireless network, Pablo Pitarch Miguel, 2013, <https://upcommons.upc.edu/handle/2099.1/19710>
[^26]: RuralCafe: Web Search in the Rural Developing World (PDF), Jay Chen et al., 2009, <http://www.ambuehler.ethz.ch/CDstore/www2009/proc/docs/p411.pdf>
[^27]: A Delay-Tolerant Network Architecture for Challenged Networks (PDF), Kevin Fall, 2003, <http://www.kevinfall.com/seipage/papers/p27-fall.pdf>
[^28]: Delay- and Disruption-Tolerant Networks (DTNs) -- A Tutorial (version 2.0) (PDF), Forrest Warthman, 2012, <http://ipnsig.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/DTN_Tutorial_v2.04.pdf>
[^29]: Healthcare Supported by Data Mule Networks in Remote Communities of the Amazon Region, Mauro Margalho Coutinho et al., 2014, <https://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2014/730760/>
[^30]: First Mile Solutions' Daknet Takes Rural Communities Online (PDF), Carol Chyau and Jean-Francois Raymond, 2005, <https://web.archive.org/web/20120126121011/www.firstmilesolutions.com/documents/FMS_Case_Study.pdf>
[^31]: DakNet: A Road to Universal Broadband Connectivity (PDF), Amir Alexander Hasson et al., 2003, <https://courses.media.mit.edu/2003fall/de/DakNet-Case.pdf>
[^32]: DakNet: Architecture and Connectivity in Developing Nations (PDF), Madhuri Bhole, 2015, <http://ijpret.com/publishedarticle/2015/4/IJPRET%20-%20ECN%20115.pdf>
[^33]: Delay Tolerant Networks and Their Applications, Longxiang Gao et al., 2015, <https://web.archive.org/web/20190309195327/http://www.citeulike.org/user/tnhh/article/13517347>
[^34]: Low-cost communication for rural internet kiosks using mechanical backhaul, A. Seth et al., 2006, <https://people.csail.mit.edu/matei/papers/2006/mobicom_kiosks.pdf>
[^35]: Searching the World Wide Web in Low-Connectivity Communities (PDF), William Thies et al., 2002, <http://tek.sourceforge.net/papers/tek-www02.pdf>
[^36]: Slow Search: Information Retrieval without Time Constraints (PDF), Jaime Teevan, 2013, <https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~yubink/hcir2013.pdf>
[^37]: Potential for Collaborative Caching and Prefetching in Largely-Disconnected Villages (PDF), Sibren Isaacman et al., 2008, <https://mrmgroup.cs.princeton.edu/papers/isaacman-winsdr503.pdf>
ine months into the COVID-19 pandemic, I accepted an invitation to join an event. It would take place, like all other events these days, in my house. The organiser send me an enthusiastic email with a Zoom background image attached, mentioning the image would make for a nice tool to hide anything I don't want share on the Zoom grid. I instantly started dreaming of also replacing my voice and face with augmented reality and AI, but was rudely awakened when I couldn't even make the background image work. My laptop's CPU is too old. Video conferencing tools handle background image calculations on the client-side, to reduce network traffic and latency. My laptop can hardly handle video conferencing without augmentation, client-side calculations are well out of its league.
<small>Still from *Sorry to Bother You* by Boots Riley (2018)</small>
Suddenly this phrase popped into my head: "If you lived here, you'd be at work already". It's an advertisement in the movie "Sorry to bother you" from writer and director Boots Riley. The movie takes place in a dystopian future where a company called Worry Free, offers employees "lifetime labour contracts" including food and housing at the company. At Worry Free you literally live at work. When I saw the movie two years ago, I had no idea how well this ad would reflect 2020's reality of living at the office, even if the office is in the home instead of home being at the office. Somehow all my things -- my house, my laptop, my printer, my electricity, my heating -- are now also used by my employer, and by Zoom, Microsoft and Google. It was an emergency. There was no time to really think this through. Nine months later though, many companies are thinking about making working at home a permanent change. Less traveling, smaller office buildings and thus less overhead and a smaller environmental footprint.
It is an industry trend to shift network bottlenecks into local computational tasks. It's called edge computing. It is not a new method, it started in the 90s with the advent of Content Distribution Networks for a faster distribution of video to end users. Today, data storage and computational tasks are both offloaded to the edge node in order to improve latency and reduce network traffic. It is particularly helpful for tasks that require fast processing speed, such as facial recognition and augmented reality, but also for bandwidth heavy applications such as cloud gaming and the growing pile of smart objects on the edge of networks, that are constantly phoning home to corporate servers generating massive amounts of data to be processed, real-time data generated by sensors and users, with zero tolerance for latency[^1]. After all these years of Software as a Service and cloud storage, moving our software and data onto corporate servers many hops away from our modem, now some of that is once again decentralized, just like the office.
It seems I am living on the edge -- edge working, edge computing, both promising a lower carbon footprint, but how? First I was told that the cloud was more green, because it is more efficient than my crappy hardware. Now, when I'm in a video conference and my laptop is sucking the power grid dry to be able to keep up with the conversation, I'm being told it's more efficient to use edge computing because it lessens network traffic. Total energy consumption is going up either way. My energy provider installed a smart meter so I can gain insight into my usage and thus magically become more energy efficient. And so climate change became my responsibility. Perhaps the smartness of the meter is its ability to distract from the urgent need to switch to renewable energy (Gabrys, 2015)? It's yet another device on the edge of the network, consuming resources well before and after its use-phase, near future e-waste, increasing the need for bandwidth, increasing power consumption. Technology as problem and solution. Is that what they mean with the circular economy?
<small>Keep America Beautiful advertisement (1953)</small>
This shift of responsibility away from corporations, or the state for that matter, is an old strategy. It privatizes and centralizes services, while outsourcing responsibilities of care and maintenance. It is also one of the oldest forms of greenwashing. In the 1950s the disposable packaging industry started a campaign, "Keep America Beautiful", in response to an attempt at legislation to reduce waste. The campaign was the launch of the concept of littering. Instead of attacking the problem of plastic waste by stopping the production of disposable packaging, the campaign placed the responsibility with consumers. "People start pollution. People can stop it."[^2] We are still dutifully reaping the rewards, picking up after ourselves, updating our hardware, lowering the thermostat, hiding our mess.
Edge computing is promising endless streams of low latency game play and video streaming. It is promising to be useful for managing renewable energy, to be more energy efficient than data centers and to reduce network traffic. On closer inspection, it is yet another example of capitalism profiting from the problems it creates, of neoliberal doctrine outsourcing burdens, while privatizing once public infrastructures and centralising those once decentralised,. Since the start of the pandemic, the tech industry has seized the opportunity to profit from disaster and followed Airbnb into people's homes. Web 2.0 introduced a business strategy that, by giving access to the means of production of content, could gain ownership over and generate profit from the product (Carr, 2006). While edge computing and remote working, users have to also pay for access to and buy elements of the means of production, through the costs of electricity, hardware, heating and housing. As Jodi Dean puts it: "personal property becomes an instrument for the capital and data accumulation of the lords of platform" (Dean, 2020).
@ -49,8 +57,4 @@ Keep America Beautiful (1953). \[advertisement\] <https://www.npr.org/2019/09/04
*Sorry to Bother You.* 2018. \[film\] Boots Riley. Los Angeles: Annapurna Pictures.
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Still from *Sorry to Bother You* by Boots Riley (2018)
@ -74,7 +74,7 @@ Gregg, M. (2010). "On Friday Night Drinks: Workplace Affects in the Age of the C
Haraway, D. (1985). "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late 20th Century", *Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature.* London/New York: Routledge. Retrieved from <https://web.archive.org/web/20130314123032/http://qss.stanford.edu/~godfrey/vonNeumann/vnedvac.pdf>
Kieron, M. (2017). "CITE: The \$1 billion city with no residents", *CNN.* Retrieved from <http://edition.cnn.com/style/article/test-city/index.html>
Kieron, M. (2017). "CITE: The $1 billion city with no residents", *CNN.* Retrieved from <http://edition.cnn.com/style/article/test-city/index.html>
McCarthy, J., Minsky, M. L., Rochester, N., and Shannon. C.E. (1955). "A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence". Retrieved from <https://web.archive.org/web/20210116113537/https://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmouth.html>
@ -115,5 +115,6 @@ but rather rescue us *into* emergencies that we are trained to ignore.
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**Santiago Zabala** is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. His most recent book is *Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts* (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020). <http://www.santiagozabala.com/>
Published in the Institute of Arts and Ideas on October 7, 2020: <https://iai.tv/articles/the-philosophy-of-warnings-auid-1646>
**Santiago Zabala** is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. His most recent book is *Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts* (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020). <http://www.santiagozabala.com/>
