2023s
- Vietnam tech firm FPT produces country’s first semiconductor chips | Reuters
- Manufacturing chips, semiconductors improves Vietnam’s role and position (vietnaminsider.vn)
- Opportunity for Vietnam to become global center of semiconductor production - Vietnam Economic Times | VnEconomy
An excavator has struck.
The cloud system of various universities in the state of Northrine Westphalia, Germany, is offline. It’s an unfortunate timing, we shared all our workshop texts for tomorrow there. But it’s also a perfect fit: planetary actions and knowledge meet.
#tech #sts #infrastructure
Through Cory Doctorow’s recent linkdump I learned about the charming non-standard standardisation story of the #fediverse. It was a lucky punch, very unlikely to happen. But here we are with a capable, open, acommercial system.
None of the big players… no one took us seriously. No one saw [the SocialWG] as a threat. No one expected it to go anywhere…. The feeling was, it was small beans, and it wasn’t worth their time.”
fossacademic.tech/2023/10/1… pluralistic.net/2023/11/1… mamot.fr/@doctorow
#sts #tech #MastodonMigration
My blog is now my not-so-secret home for casual writing, all posts here and elsewhere reside on stefanlaser.micro.blog. Replies are fedi integrations™. It works like a charm.
Manton describes the main idea of POSSE quite beautifully: book.micro.blog/cross-pos…
Social networks may come and go, but the canonical version of our posts live at our own indie microblog.
#tech #blogging
Coffee review.
#waste #history
Patchy value chains
With this post, I want to bring a color to the blog, show how I experience my daily life as a researcher in Vietnam, and how I follow material infrastructures. It’s going on in bits and pieces, and some is a patchwork. Last not least, this is also a means of sharing links and snapshots.
Bits & Trees of Data Centres
What does it actually mean to trace and traverse the infrastructure and production networks of a very specific building? That in itself is a difficult question, and in our research project in Bochum we are playing out this problem on a data center on top of that.
Estrid and I recently published a first article on this in the sustainability-oriented Bits & Bäume issue, see for the full book here and in this post.
When it comes to on-the-ground arrangements, it’s often very concrete. We see flashing servers, smoking heads, convivial interlocutors, but also cables hidden on the minus sixth floor in a tunnel. My role in this research is less direct though, as leads are quickly lost. Where does the path lead if we take the computers and materials seriously, if semiconductors and atoms guide the way?
From Anatomy to patches?
With the Anatomy of AI project, researchers have impressively shown how an incredible number of connections are attached to such a small device as an Amazon Speaker. There are also lives hanging on it, due to the precarious working conditions, from the dark mine to the orange laser to the gray-dusty assembly area.
Check out the Anatomy of AI project of Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler, it’s a magnificient beauty: anatomyof.ai/img/ai-an…
Moving on.
Computer chips are, at their core, plates of sand with carvings that are only a few atoms in size. They make data centres what they are, high-performances clusters in particular, which is what our “building” is also aiming for. Innovations on an ultra-small scale have led to large-scale shifts in the last century. And this is currently happening again, according to my research. The chip industry has its centers, much is concentrated in China and non-China aka Taiwan. But thanks to Corona, the US-China trade war and other political-economic reasons, things are currently changing. It’s a hot topic.
Thinking SEA
Countries like Vietnam are leaving their mark on the world map of IT production networks.
I am in contact with the first stakeholders, but I have to take it slowly. Growth via IT is welcome in Vietnam. Questions rather less. There is a lot at stake. A lot is in the news. I say little.
And so for the first weeks and months in the so-called Far East, in the Asia-Pacific, I am concerned with understanding moods and pleasant tones. Of many impressions. In the process, the first patches and speculations come together.
As the above links show, something like a new high-tech industry is growing in Vietnam. There are massive tech parks, even here in my immediate vicinity in Hanoi. I have not arrived there yet. FPT Software manufactures Make in Vietnam chips | Science and technology (diendandoanhnghiep.vn)
Energy driving
Energy drives me, not only as a topic of my habilitation. What happens if I’m in an elevator and the power goes out? As of June 2023, this is a real danger; we are plagued by “planned blackouts,” the planning for which unfortunately escapes us and our neighbors. Renewable energies are to be advanced in a new program, after a long period of standstill, but only more coal can provide for more stability in the short and medium term.
To cite the Vietnam Weekly newsletter:
Hydro and coal account for nearly 95% of northern Vietnam’s energy supply (split almost evenly), but the former is running at 24% of capacity and the latter is at 76.6%. Vietnam Weekly: Power Outages Hammer the North
I also have coal in mind mind on a daily basis, travelling across the city. With masks, as most people do.
Mind how the so-called street ninja tackle this (and sexism) in Vietnam: e.vnexpress.net/projects/…
How do such energy considerations permeate the data center industry? It thinks in terms of efficiency, in terms of the logic of increases, and this is how it interprets the sustainability debate, just like many politicians. For me, it will be a matter of looking more at the inconspicuous costs, that which is needed materially for production.
Social sciences, ecology and careful digital communication
How can social science research address planetary concerns and be designed carefully? Two recent articles in Science & Technology Studies address this question with a view to different cases: Conference Mobility on the one hand and Decentralized Social Media on the other.
Jumping on the bandwagon
In Fieldnotes on FlyingLess Conferencing we discuss our different experiences as train travelers to the EASST conference in Madrid. Some of them were long journeys through Europe, including stops. But it is possible, in Europe the plane is not without alternative, even if the scattered infrastructure does not always make it easy.
A quote from our text (that is, by Vanessa Ashall, Tobias Held, Stefan Laser, Julie Sascia Mewes, Mace Ojala, Nona Schulte-Roemer, Robert Smith, Richard Tutton, Sine Zambach):
Initiatives such as Flying Less and podcasts by the Oxford University Flyingless Group provide information, discussion and practical suggestions on how we as individual academics can alter our practices, but also how to challenge our institutions and professional associations. There are also discussions on how to organise conferences in hybrid or hub-like formats to reduce travel activities. For the recently held EASST 2022 conference in July, some delegates decided to journey by long-distance train across Europe to reach Madrid. As one would expect from a group of STS scholars, this was not done without some appreciation of the sociotechnical challenges involved and of course with that long standing commitment of our field that ‘things could be otherwise’.
Shooting down the bird
Digital communication has become a cornerstone of academic exchange, internally and with media and partners. In the fall and winter of 2022, Twitter and Elon Musk respectively have attracted some attention. The “Birdsite” is no longer the same; now it has become a right-wing agitation platform, with dubious blue-flagged accounts hijacking the discourse. But you can’t do without social media, at least it makes sense to explore other forms of participation. With Fediverse, Mastodon, and other popular apps like PeerTube and Calckey, a veritable alternative is growing that is of utmost relevance to STS researchers.
We used the timing and discussions on Twitter and Mastodon to think about platform design and an “Other.”
A quote from the post by Stefan Laser, Anne Pasek, Estrid Sørensen, Mél Hogan, Mace Ojala, Jens Fehrenbacher, Maximilian Gregor Hepach, Leman Çelik, Koushik Ravi Kumar:
What kinds of worlds are not probable but possible from the ruins of Twitter? Mastodon might not be the next big thing. Yet it is an exciting network that many people are experimenting with and, for STS scholars, offers entry points to learn through practical engagement. Perhaps more important than Mastodon per se is the idea of othernets (Dourish 2017 chapter 7); the internet we have is not a necessity, and might take a very different shape and feel different based on new collectivities. If Mastodon has a less devastating impact on the environment, what else about our internet can we change, or make a case for changing?
In such initiatives, it remains crucial to move away from individual responsibility to discuss structural interdependencies and collective mobilization. This is what the low-carbon research method group does, for example. I will use this blog to discuss my own experiences with research pratices and material infrastructures.