Search Results for: scale

The Cloud is Too Loud: Spotlighting the Voices of Community Activists from the Data Center Capital of the World

Madelyn Zander August 13, 2024
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What does it mean to speak about the cloud? While the term tends to conjure images of fluffy white objects, the cloud in technological terms is a complex physical infrastructure that comprises hundreds of thousands of servers distributed around the globe that provide on-demand access to data storage and computing resources over the internet. The problem with describing this physical infrastructure as the cloud is that it abstracts away the data centers, subsea fiber optic cables, copper lines, and networked devices that enable our digital interactions, as well as the consequences that the expansion of this infrastructure poses to people and to the environment. Scholars of infrastructure have written about the cloud’s incredible energy and water consumption to power and cool servers, as well as its massive carbon footprint (Carruth 2014; Edwards et al. 2024; Hogan 2018; Johnson 2023). However, less attention has been given to the cloud’s auditory presence, a problem of growing concern for people who live alongside cloud infrastructure. In this post, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork that began in 2021 with community activists in Northern Virginia, a place known as the “data center capital of the world,” to bring the cloud’s emerging sound pollution problem into focus. (read more...)

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Challenging Normalized Surveillance: “Birds on the Wire” Surveillance in Mexico

Mariel Garcia-Montes August 6, 2024
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In Mexican slang, “hay pájaros en el alambre” (there are birds on the wire), is an expression used to imply that a private conversation is at risk of being intentionally overheard. Birds on the wire can mean anything from one’s auntie overhearing a conversation from the other room, to a phone being wiretapped at long range by a state agency. In everyday parlance, this phrase does a lot of work to signal a broader awareness and cultural acceptance of surveillance. If, in conversation, someone is reminded of the birds on the wire, they are expected to beware—not for the birds to go away. Perhaps the statement produces a chilling effect of sorts, rather than an expectation of privacy. (read more...)

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Between the Bitterness of Anonymity and Ethics is Racism: Reflections for Anthropological Research on Science in the ‘Backyard’

João Paulo Siqueira June 20, 2024
Esse conteúdo também está disponível em português.
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This essay is one of the results of a roda de conversa (a conversation circle) that took place at the University of Brasilia, Brazil, in December 2023. Professor Soraya Fleischer had the idea and invited her advisees: two men and three women. Since all of us were, in different ways, doing research with researchers that were also working at the University of Brasilia, the roda de conversa had as a guiding theme the following question: what is it like to conduct research with interlocutors who share the same “institutional house”—who work in the same “backyard”? (read more...)

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Sobre el Acto de Observar: Reflexiones sobre las Negociaciones de la ONU sobre Política Climática desde París hasta Hoy

Katie Foster June 10, 2024
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Observar (verbo) Notar o percibir (algo) y registrarlo como importante. Ver (a alguien o algo) cuidosa y atentamente. Notar o detectar (algo) durante un estudio científico. Hacer comentarios. Cumplir o acatar (una obligación social, legal, ética o religiosa) Guardar (silencio) en cumplimiento de una norma o costumbre o temporariamente en señal de respeto Cumplir o participar en (un rito o ceremonia) Celebrar o reconocer (un aniversario). Fuente: Oxford Languages (Consultado: 3 marzo 2024) www.google.com Casi todos los años desde 1994, representantes de 198 países se han reunidos en la reunión anual de la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático (CMNUCC), conocida como la Conferencia de las Partes (COP), para debatir cómo abordar el inmenso y insoluble desafío del cambio climático. Junto a estes representativos nacionales, miles de participantes de organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONG) ambientales y sociales, empresas, gobiernos locales, naciones indígenas, instituciones de investigación y organizaciones comerciales siguen atentamente el curso de las negociones. A estos asistentes se les conoce oficialmente como “Observadores.” La primera vez que participé en estas reuniones como una Observadora fue en la COP 20 celebrada en Lima (Perú). El año siguiente en París (Francia), participé en las extensas negociones de la COP 21, en las que los países participantes adoptaron el Acuerdo de París. Ocho años más tarde, volví para la COP 28 en Dubai (Emiratos Árabes Unidos). Dado este lapso de tiempo, pude considerar: ¿Qué cambió de la COP 21 a la COP 28? ¿Cómo influyen las condiciones globales evolucionando en el proceso? Y ¿qué permite el acto de observar dentro de los espacios multilaterales y el proceso de elaboración de políticas? (read more...)

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On Observing: Reflections on UN Climate Policy Negotiations from Paris to the Present

Katie Foster May 30, 2024
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Observe (verb) notice or perceive (something) and register it as being significant. watch (someone or something) carefully and attentively. take note of or detect (something) in the course of a scientific study. make a remark. fulfill or comply with (a social, legal, ethical, or religious obligation). maintain (silence) in compliance with a rule or custom, or temporarily as a mark of respect. perform or take part in (a rite or ceremony). celebrate or acknowledge (an anniversary). Source: Oxford Languages (Accessed: March 3, 2024) www.google.com. Nearly every year since 1994, representatives from 198 nations have gathered at the annual meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), known as the Conference of the Parties (COP), to discuss how to address the immense and intractable challenge of anthropogenic climate change. Alongside these national representatives, thousands of participants from environmental and social non-governmental organizations (NGOs), businesses, local governments, Indigenous nations, research institutions, and trade organizations attentively watch the course of the negotiations. These attendees are officially known as “Observers.” I first joined these meetings as an Observer in 2014 at COP 20 in Lima, Peru. The following year in Paris, France, I participated in the sprawling COP 21 negotiations where the Paris Agreement was adopted by participating countries. Then, eight years later, I returned for COP 28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Given this long gap of time, I was able to consider: What has changed from COP 21 to COP 28? How do evolving global conditions influence the process? And what does the act of observing allow within multilateral spaces and the policy-making process? (read more...)

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Cultures of Trust in Computing and Beyond

Samantha Breslin May 28, 2024
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What does it mean to trust? In this post I explore how there are specific ways of producing trust in computer science education. I draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted for my PhD in an undergraduate computer science program in Singapore, where I examined the “making” of computer scientists—how students are shaped as socio-technical persons through computer science education. During my fieldwork, I conducted participant observation in eight undergraduate computer science courses across all years (first to fourth) with a focus on required core courses for the computer science program, which is what I draw primarily on for this post. I also conducted interviews with students, professors, and administrators; policy and curriculum analysis; and participant observation in the department, university, and tech community more generally. I also myself studied computer science as an undergraduate student, which led to my interest in this topic. (read more...)

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Audio Ethnographies of Water from Latin America: Aquatic Attractions

Alejandra Osejo-Varona February 22, 2024

Forty years ago, four hippos arrived in Colombia. Drug trafficker Pablo Escobar illegally imported them as part of his project to build an open-door zoo at Hacienda Naples, his enormous farm located in the Magdalena River Basin. Among many other luxuries and eccentricities, the farm housed 1,200 animals. It also included artificial lakes where the aquatic animals lived. After Escobar’s death in 1993, when the Hacienda Napoles was abandoned, most of the animals died due to lack of care, and others were transferred to other zoos. Only the hippos remained, sheltering in the lakes. In Colombia, over 160 hippos inhabit various locations. Some reside in areas formerly part of Hacienda Napoles, while others are dispersed along the Magdalena River. (read more...)

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Audio Ethnographies of Water from Latin America: Attend the Rains

Carol Iglesias Otero February 22, 2024

Each night and day in the industrial port of Ciudad del Carmen (Campeche, Mexico), dozens of Pemex oil platform workers roll their small suitcases across the concrete as they approach the dock to board ships that will take them to offshore platforms for two-week shifts. At any given moment, seventeen thousand people live and work aboard the ships and platforms in aging infrastructure. On land, dozens of logistics workers spend their days observing. They watch the movement of people and the movement of the weather. They then record it and make decisions based on what they note. Constant transport—from workers to provisions and materials—is required to maintain a constant drilling rhythm, and all needs to happen according to schedule, a task made more complicated by the volatile weather conditions that characterize the Gulf of Mexico. (read more...)

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