Link Dumps
The #technofix is under scrutiny in #sts. But for a somewhat surprising reason: because of its conceptual weakness. So here is the #infrastructure fix. And thoughts from #LeakageSTS in Dresden
This is a hot take that Lee Vinsel has been trying to drive home for a couple of weeks already. “Hot”, as in, a lively idea, something he grapples with. I find the idea puzzling and compelling. So here are a few thoughts, experiences, and links to follow.
Describing something as a #technofix has become a staple of critical commentary on technology, and perhaps global capitalism per se. A technofix is not really a fix, rather, it distracts from the actual issues. Mostly, these are social ones. Think all of what Silicon Valley is doing, like AI solving something. It’s delusional.
Yet Lee and others ask: Is this really a pressing issue? What exactly are technofixes? It appears like this is a slippery term applied to anything vaguely. Sounds familiar to me. More importantly, however, technofixes might not be the most pressing things to discuss. STS devotes too much attention to problematic technologies. (Perhaps technologies and innovations more generally.)
Check out Lee’s recent podcast Peoples & Things where he discusses the matter together with the engineer Guru Madhawhan, who wrote a book on wicked problems.
This also relates to the discussion around “solutionism,” a term that, I agree, remains rather vague yet very strong and often ignores materialities, impasses, and virtualities.
Leakage Experience
Moving on to our recent #stsing conference in Dresden. I was taking part in a panel on waste and discards, hosted by a research network that we, as waste scholars, have received funding for. Check the links for info on both the event and the network.
sts-leakage.org waste-in-motion.org
Some presenters and commentators mentioned the notion of a technofix. It is indeed a recurring theme in all things discard. When you encounter marine plastics, there are gigantic projects around ocean cleanup that spread hope and call for a solution. With a lot of funding. Easy rollout of the technofix critique. I’ve research electronic waste in detail, and through recycling technologies, the technofix is ever-present. Well, digital devices themselves are technofix devices to a certain degree, promising easier lifes, more efficient work, less paper, less stress, whatnot.
Where to go from here? First, I was reminded of the critical discussion around this critique (a criti-hype).
(Citing Cory although this is also a term introduced by Lee)
sts-news.medium.com/youre-doi…
Technofixes might not be that big of a problem, empirically speaking. Thus, this analytic would have outlived itself. It might be us scholars bathing in our on conceptual pool. Still, we had a fruitful conversation in Dresden around this very notion. The critique of the critique was resonating, but staying with the technofix as a genuine problem remained of high value.
Excessive systems of industrialism, capitalism and colonialism turn to seemingly novel technologies to turn the tides and stay focused on growth, no matter what. This is hot the oil industries turn to plastic materials in times of crises.
www.fastcompany.com/90771524/…
In Dresden, we also had the pleasure of enjoying Nerea Calvillo’s keynote on air pollution. Nerea argued that technologies of remedy are part of the problem of containing air pollution. Well, even the notion of “containment” is problematic, because no container holds tight. What has to be done instead is tackle the upstream pollution; to cut off the gas, and oil, and move away from coal. To stop the pollution instead of adapting to it.
As a daily user of air purification technologies and face masks (#Vietnam, #Hanoi), I was puzzled. Is there no value in maintenance, care, even for moments, even if this is not helpful in a systematic sense – because it saves lives, here and now. But Nerea doubled down and made this into an argument of against repair.
I am not sure whether I like this twist, turning against maintenance and repair, even if only for strategic reasons. Narea has published on the troubles of living in a permanently polluted world, so this is not really an argument against care and its conceptual siblings, I suppose.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.11… www.arch.columbia.edu/books/cat…
Max Liboiron offers a related argument, although with a different focus. Similarly vast in consequences, perhaps. Think threshold limits and pollution. The dose is the problem; you know the deal. Sounds reasonable. Keep pollution below the limits.
But because of the very invention of threshold values, pollution is here to stay. Because of the fixation on threshold values, it is here to say. Threshold values pushed Ulrich Beck into mad mode in his Risk Society book, a paragraph that is hardly cited. And Max writes,
Instead of changing systems that allowed industrial effluents to begin with, governance could turn to technical efforts to locate and manage allowable limits. This is the foundation of [what Max calls] the permission-to-pollute system." (p. 51 in Pollution is Colonialism)
The Infrastructure Fix
Instead of juggling with technofixes, it is worth exploring “infrastructural fixes”. When systems set up and embrace infrastructures that make sociotechnical change an impossible task, then the infrastructure fixes people, things, and lives. Investing in the brutal nature of these infrastructures becomes deeply problematic. Slow violence is bound to happen. This is demonstrated well in energy thinking, say, when the After Oil collective posits:
“Then there are the enduring powers of infrastructure: pipelines, refineries, highways that push us to replicate behaviours and cultural forms. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, for the social majority to imagine and embrace a society that is not dependent on carbon energy.” (After Oil 2015: 39)
So, when you and I and the affected communities just cannot move away from daily struggles, deadly troubles, then it’s worth rolling out a “fix” critique. A critique that turns to infrastructural harm.
It sounds like a good idea to stop using notions when you hardly know what they are about anymore. Sure, uttering “technofix” might get people engaged and find an initial common ground. But it’s trajectory is puzzling. So, here’s the infrastructure fix as a rough sketch.
The snapshot attached is from the Leakage conference, with a zoom on materials dug up in a panel on coal landscapes and imaginaries. Imaginge fixing that mix of contaminated and probably clean matter.
A linklist that spreads air purification dedication through a viral story, two neat podcasts, and once again looks at pleasant ways to enjoy the web
You have probably come across this post, but in case you have not, get ready for a thorough analysis that is not only for pollution or tech nerds. (But it’s certainly ALSO for those people.)
In “How Google is killing independent sites like ours”, the independent website HouseFresh goes into the details to show why Google Search has deteriorated – has become shit, as Cory Doctorow puts it.
Savvy SEOs at big media publishers (or third-party vendors hired by them) realised that they could create pages for ‘best of’ product recommendations without the need to invest any time or effort in actually testing and reviewing the products first. So, they peppered their pages with references to a ‘rigorous testing process,’ their ‘lab team,’ subject matter experts ‘they collaborated with,’ and complicated methodologies that seem impressive at a cursory look. Sometimes, they even added photos of ‘tests’ with products covered in Post-it notes, someone holding a tape measure, and people with very ‘scientific’ clipboards. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to show you’re doing the thing you’re supposed to be doing, but what happens when that’s as far as you go? All they had to do was say what they needed to say to pass a manual check if it came to that.
It is a particular case, air purifiers, but everyone knows these weird websites HouseFresh is talking about. At least when you’re using the internet to order things. Which is virtually everyone since at least Covid.
What to do with air pollution data?
I study waste for 10 years, and thinking about air pollution is part of this project. This has also to do with my studies in India back in 2012, when I was (severely) sick from the air pollution. I also almost ran an air pollution research project, but the grant competition was too high. Anyway, since then I have been eager to follow public discussions around air pollution and how the public is engaged.
There’s a new piece by the brilliant Rest of the World magazine that puts a focus on South Asia. Like many features on waste and pollution, it takes a research stance and introduces ✨data✨. It’s great. But what’s the point if the data is boring because it’s so obvious?
“Riders in the Smog” is the title of this piece, and in this the authors equipped gig workers with pollution monitors. It’s a fairly specific consumer brand (Atmotube Pro) with proprietary data interpretations, yet it gets the job done. “The readings were off the charts.” Sort of. Or, as it’s described in a scene.
Alongside tracking specific pollutants, the Atmotube Pro gives an overall real-time air quality score (AQS) from 0–100, with zero being the most severely polluted, and 100 being the cleanest. According to Atmo, the company that makes the Atmotube monitors, a reading of 0–20 should be considered a health alert, under which conditions “everyone should avoid all outdoor exertion.” But the three gig workers found their monitors consistently displayed the lowest possible score. As Iqbal went about his work picking up and dropping off customers, his pollution monitor barely budged from a score of zero. “Is this device even working?” he asked.
You cannot divide by 0. There is no fragment of healthy air in everyday life in Lahore, New Delhi, and Dhaka. It’s slightly better indoors. But that does not translate to healthy. It just moves from “hazardous” to “very unhealthy”. (This is something that is only told by the genius categories introduced by the Air Quality Index. It made the grade choice of not setting an upper limit, so that the PM1s, 2s, 10s and VOCs can keep on rising and we may through a daunting colour and name at it.
There is also a methodology article on this: https://restofworld.org/2024/riders-in-the-smog-air-quality-methodology/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feeds
While the data is not particularly useful, I enjoyed how the authors talked to medical staff and their recent experiences. This is how to add quality and concrete experiences. Recently, I have become to know the troubling perspective through Hanoi people: It’s bad but I still do relatively fine. A bit of coughing, it will be gone. But there are many stories of people, and tough Schicksalsschläge, that are worth reporting.
Podcast of the week
I like to include podcast in this, one podcast if possible. Yet it had to be two this week. Mél and Anne had their (often shared) discussion on how to make sense of (data centre) efficiency (data), and the politics of engagement. Go Data Fix!
And then there is fellow German waste scholar (LMU Munich and Uni Augsburg, now Heisenberg Professor in Oxford) Simone Müller who was on the Edge Effects show. Dial in for a wild ride on waste colonialism.
I feel environmental justice has done a lot of work to go the civil rights route. We see scholars and a lot of national activists coming to think about civil rights—what that means for non-discriminatory disposal of hazardous waste or also the situated mass of dirty industries in particular communities. But interestingly, they have done little oftentimes to pivot to the notion of other universal rights—universal civil rights versus something like that could almost be framed as “separate but equal” on a global scale.
I found this podcast because someone recommended it on Mastodon. A Segway. Swoosh.
Talking new and new old web again
Vice apparently shuts down, because of odd management. Platform decay, see above.
www.404media.co/behind-th… pluralistic.net/2024/02/2…
Also consider how Reddit is doing the next step of selling its user/data base.
AND WORDPRESS
This website POSSE here and independent networks like the Fediverse are one way to tackle the issue. But this new thinking can go in different directions. A few examples I compiled this week are the following.
Remember your first website from the 1990s or early 2000s? Ashamed/proud of the looks? I only now realized that there are extensive networks of websites that help you create these wonderful pages again. Neocities is the most prominent one.
(Also remember the past when annoyed users created a People Against Under Construction Images manifesto that is still life today. Rehearse!)
Under Construction images are never seen at highly popular and constantly changing web sites such as Netscape CNN, Yahoo!, or Lycos. If the best don’t do it, neither should the worst. Under Construction Images should be removed from the layout of all Web pages. Take yours off now!
Ok, boomer.
Lastly, embrace this: Towards a quieter, friendlier web:
With gems such as:
Share what you enjoy or what you’re curious about. Not everyone will enjoy of it, some people will appreciate different things, but build friendships on mutual interests. Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know something. Being forthright and asking for help is an admirable quality.
Wrap up
I try to do these dumps regularly now. A brief holiday was in between this and the more recent post. Let me know what you think in the comments and leave a kudos.
One more thing. The snapshots I include are Fuji pictures from the region. I think this period of AI hype that also tries to get rid of the creative arts is a perfect time to embrace photography, and more.
A linkdump on hot climate events, web scams, and Vietnam greeting the dragon
Starting off with an odd one: Big Oil apparently funded climate science since the early 1950s. And it was Keeling himself at the centre. Think Keeling curves and long-term CO2 measurements. But it sounds like a different time. Less evil still, so that Keeling could use this funding for the good. Part of this story is that differences between air pollution and CO2 emissions were much less clear.
Newly discovered documents affirm that the automobile and petroleum industries funded early climate science Keeling conducted at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) between 1954 and 1956. Records show that “oil and auto companies” sponsored the scientist’s research via an organization called the Southern California Air Pollution Foundation, formed in 1953 to tackle Los Angeles’s infamous smog. American Motors, Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors were among 18 automotive companies that gave money to the foundation.
Fast forward to the future of the present. Here is a sweet summary of climate disasters and tipping points on different levels:
And if you crave Solarpunk alternative futures, follow this recent link list:
mastodon.floe.earth/@lex/1118…
Talking academic reflections, check out the videos of the ADM+S Electronics < > Ecologies series:
5 events, 4 cities, and so many excellent speakers. My thanks to all of the presenters for joining and sharing expertise.
Many things are happening, it seems. Also, on the regulatory side. My current prime example of semiconductor manufacturing gets hotter every year, with tighter climate rules approaching. There’s yet another one:
www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/…
But, as Gerry McGovern notes, how much does it count?
Podcast of the week
I happen to share one podcast per week, and here is an episode of Drilled that you surely should not miss, featuring a “messy conversation” on the climate movement w/ Rhiana Gunn-Wright. Slightly tilted towards the American culture war, but quickly turning global. It also fits to the link mentioned before. Why are companies sending powerful signals to care for global emissions, but ignore to take into consideration affected communities next door?
Rhiana Gunn-Wright was one of the architects of the Green New Deal, and today works as the climate policy director for the Roosevelt Institute. In this episode we get into the nuances of the IRA, how to handle climate being a “culture war” issue, what’s going on with anti-renewables, and what the climate movement loses when it turns its back on justice issues and particularly when it turns its back on the Black community.
The new web of scams
I’ve recently framed the turn toward non-commercial web applications as a turn toward the lovely new web. Let’s not forget that it’s full of scams, too.
A phenomenal example is propaganda in India made by and for Modi.
In moments of political tension, stars with huge followings put out nearly copy-and-paste messages of support. And as the election nears, cabinet ministers have turned to podcasts and online broadcasts with influencers to reach a generation that gets its information outside the traditional channels that Mr. Modi has co-opted.
Cory Doctorow covers the more individual side of scams. Scams, basically. Reaching out when you’re most vulnerable.
I find the inner workings of scams to be fascinating, and it’s also important to remind people that everyone is vulnerable sometimes, and scammers are willing to try endless variations until an attack lands at just the right place, at just the right time, in just the right way. If you think you can’t get scammed, that makes you especially vulnerable.
Cory nailed it once again with another post this day, calling out Apple for its corruption, and blatantly misreading EU regulation.
There’s a strain of anti-anti-monopolist that insists that they’re not pro-monopoly – they’re just realists who understand that global gigacorporations are too big to fail, too big to jail, and that governments can’t hope to rein them in. Trying to regulate a tech giant, they say, is like trying to regulate the weather. This ploy is cousins with Jay Rosen’s idea of “savvying,” defined as: “dismissing valid questions with the insider’s, ‘and this surprises you?’” The reason this foolish nonsense flies is that we are living in an age of rampant corruption and utter impunity. Companies really do get away with both literal and figurative murder. Governments really do ignore horrible crimes by the rich and powerful, and fumble what rare, few enforcement efforts they assay. And then we get the details.
I rather keep working on the lovely new old web. So here is one more of the encouraging examples, cherishing the open and un-commodifiable nature of RSS.
Vietnam welcoming the Dragon
Lunar new year is very close, and as you can see with the image attached, it’s colourful and vibrant. Yet it’s a hectic time. The new year will be the year of the dragon (we’re leaving the cat behind). Everyone on the streets felt tense. Better getting things sorted before you leave to the family events. I also saw some and heard about more road accidents.
Meanwhile, local police officers get tough on drunk driving. Considering the high number of fatalities…this sounds like a good idea. But perhaps do it less random?
Tourists pouring in still complain about the “lacklustre” nightlife in Vietnam. Perhaps not a bad sign after all?
Lunar new year is like Christmas and New Year packed into one (maybe more on top), basically shutting down the urban centres. This is also the reason I will keep a low profile for a week. Cheers.
A linkdump that explores the lovely new web, the Vietnamese chip news cycle, and ambivalent ecological developments
“Where have all the websites gone?” is the question posed by blogger Jason. And he sends us a link with a marvellous list. Let’s go down this path.
It’s a technical marvel, that internet. Something so mindblowingly impressive that if you showed it to someone even thirty years ago, their face would melt the fuck off. So why does it feel like something’s missing? Why are we all so collectively unhappy with the state of the web?
Take the Grumpy Website:
Or the manifest for a cheap internet. Sweet.
So, work on your own website and be sceptical of the containers of modern social media (or whatever, do what you want with the web, it’s just in another exciting new phase). The topic has been nicely summarised here:
I’ve started exploring RSS feeds in creative ways, which is also how I came across the “where have all the websites gone” topic via No Tech Magazine. Not only is there the interesting (if sometimes flawed) Low Tech Magazine, but there’s also No Tech Magazine, yes. Check out the recent post about various interesting meta links,
www.notechmagazine.com/2024/01/n…
As a science and technology scholar who studies digital infrastructures and ecology (and happens to be in love with photography), this post is well worth reading, too:
The History and environmental impact of digital image formats [By Unthinking Photography].
As the ecological footprint of photography shifted from film rolls and developing chemicals to digital storage, network transfer and processing power, I see only three ways to reduce our footprint: making fewer pictures, reducing their quality, or using better image formats. Which of these options do you prefer?
What is actually the value of photography in research, how does it come about, how can (must!) it be done differently? This is something I’ve only thought about superficially in the past (and websites have piqued my interest in kbs and the carbon footprint of megabytes). However, I have a feeling that there is still a lot of discussion to be had here.
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Moving on. We’re still deep in the fog here in Vietnam. But it’s an exciting time. I’ve been working on a commentary about the ongoing chip rush, and every week there’s new material in the form of hot news. (On a side-note: my commentary has just been desk-rejected by the first journal I submitted it to. But it has been such a nice comment that helps me put out the text somewhere else, or expand on it in a longer piece. Cultivate friendly terms of rejection, and academia becomes a happier place!).
Vietnam speaks money: German chipmakers want to take part. And American investors have raised billions (!) of dollars. With a big if: Eight billion if the local government invests in renewable energy, which it finds difficult – and will not tackle to quickly because of a) fear of too risky investments leading to accusations of corruption and landing in a local jail or worse (yes, that’s exactly what happens in the context of wind and solar certificates very recently), b) the strong coal lobby and c) the enormous task of maintaining and expanding infrastructure. The past wars have destroyed a lot which still hinders development. Nevertheless, the Vietnamese government is sending strong signals, just this week in Davos.
asia.nikkei.com/Business/… asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight… vietnamweekly.substack.com/p/strivin…
To cite Mike from his Substack:
[Prime minister] Chính guaranteed government support for investors in these fields while noting that the government views semiconductors as a driving force for development, with VnExpress quoting him as saying:
“To develop these fields, Vietnam will promote three strategic breakthroughs: strategic infrastructure, training high-quality human resources and perfecting institutions."
Once again: This topic should always be covered with a hint towards a struggling civil society. Here is one.
www.thevietnamese.org/2024/01/l…
I not only try to take stock of high-tech chip developments in Vietnam, but curious developments in other sectors concerning socio-ecological transitions more broadly. Two links were just remarkable during the past week.
One, look at this feature on parcels stolenfrom train carriages in the US. It’s a wild ride with lovely (friendly gangster-type) characters.
Of all the dozens of suspected thieves questioned by the detectives of the Train Burglary Task Force at the Los Angeles Police Department during the months they spent investigating the rise in theft from the city’s freight trains, one man stood out. What made Victor Llamas memorable wasn’t his criminality so much as his giddy enthusiasm for trespassing. He was a self-taught expert of the supply chain, a connoisseur of shipping containers. Even in custody, as the detectives interrogated him numerous times, after multiple arrests, in a windowless police-station room in the spring of 2022, a kind of nostalgia would sweep over the man. “He said that was the best feeling he’d ever had, jumping on the train while it was moving,” Joe Chavez, who supervised the task force’s detectives, told me. “It was euphoric for him.”
Second, and not so funny, the transition to low-carbon energy grids is being thwarted by finance capitalism. That’s a bit of a non-surprise. Still, the details of the new scams are (sorry for the uncreative repetition) wild.
The government created subsidies – tax credits, direct cash, and mixes thereof – in the expectation that Wall Street would see all these credits and subsidies that everyday people were entitled to and go on the hunt for them. And they did! Armies of fast-talking sales-reps fanned out across America, ringing dooorbells and sticking fliers in mailboxes, and lying like hell about how your new solar roof was gonna work out for you.
These hustlers tricked old and vulnerable people into signing up for arrangements that saw them saddled with ballooning debt payments (after a honeymoon period at a super-low teaser rate), backstopped by liens on their houses, which meant that missing a payment could mean losing your home.
To finish with multimedia: watch this episode about “The KGB, The Computer and Me - The Cuckoo’s Egg Story”
A link dump featuring: Public decay
Picture me as A Person Who Stares At Infrastructures, focusing on anything to do with repair, a lot of tech, low-carbon experiments, and a bias towards Asia-Pacific.
#linkdump #vietnam #taiwan #Asia #tech #sts
👇🏼
Let me know what you think of such a dump.
I’m sitting in front of a screen in the capital of Vietnam, and we’ve seen some curious trouble recently. We, meaning: the caste of expats. There have been rumours of the most important man, the general secretary of the CPV, being sick. Perhaps deceased.
And then he turned up in a parliamentary session. www.bloomberg.com/news/arti…
What strikes me is how some men were quite sure and eager to discuss the matter. Being ahead of things. You found this mostly on former Twitter, of course, a place that cherishes public decay.
There is another hot topic during the Winter months. Air pollution not only keeps expats busy and wondering how to do things differently. Still, it’s the expats (like me) who set up sensors and think about this very often. Some of them move.
vietnamweekly.substack.com/p/the-air…
This reminds me of a fierce discussion in Delhi a few years back. Journalists openly called for others to leave. There is a colonial touch in this cleanliness fetish, which just recently has been captured beautifully in a podcast episode of Radio Web MACBA that I highly recommend. It emphasizes how infrastructures are political, and entangled with historical burden, in multiple ways.
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Cory Doctorow has been very busy explaining how monopolies are at the heart of tech companies, which is problematic for most humans except the billionaires attached to it.
Such a system produces engines that cannot tame SEO bullshit.
And corporate blogging platforms that should not exist in the first place.
badnewsletter.substack.com/p/all-the…
But there are interesting, almost surprising developments on other tech fronts. Notably, the right to repair. On the one hand, sure:
Apple embraced the movement half-heartedly a while ago, but in reality, it is still going for software-based locking of its system and pushing its robot-driven recycling, aka shredding system. Alison and I have written about this a while ago.
www.ephemerajournal.org/contribut…
It is also worth noting that Apple keeps on drifting away from its security features, not only with its messenger integration wars but also when it comes to AirDrop exploits that harm Chinese citizens (and China proudly shared its strategy of exploiting Apple devices),
Yet on the other hand, there’s Google, this week entirely going down the right-to-repair road. Let’s see how this plays out.
It may have to do with a new regulatory environment wary of monopolies.
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In other news, the Taiwan democracy had a little ballot thingy. China is not happy, but neither is the youth. This is of major regional and global relevance>
China apparently tries new economic strategies to exert power, yet its force is limited. So far.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s semiconductor powerhouse, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, aka TSMC, oscillates between bad closing and awesome prediction numbers. Taking part in these evaluations is wild and perfect for analysts to play with.
I am currently working on an academic comment bringing together insights from semiconductor industry events in Asia-Pacific, and I make the case that the realities on the ground need to be acknowledged and brought together with how we envision digital things to work. This is how I think of staring at infrastructures.
Let me close with a little gem I found this week. A little dated it may be, but very helpful for building low-carbon digital tools. Websites, really. try keeping the main load below 14kb. It comes at multiple benefits and makes users happy. As nicely visualised by this post:
So much for the link dump, a new experiment in my note-taking.