Visit of the exhibition: Musings on a Glass Box – Diller, Scofidio + Renfro

I have not been posting for almost 3 weeks. The reason is that I was finishing to write (or rewrite) some parts of my dissertation. It was sumbitted on friday. This is the raw version without graphic editing.

Today I felt exhausted. It feels good in a way because you feel like you have accomplished something that matters. I think I want my work to make me accomplish things for people. This is what I discovered while writing this dissertation…

I needed to rest this is why I went to La Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain. It was my first time here. There is a lot of sunlight, everything feels warm. I went there to see the  Musings on a Glass Box installation. This is very poetic and it gives you time to rest. The installation is divided into two parts: while in the first room you can follow a bucket with water in it. It’s aim is to collect water drops from the roof. Inside the bucket, you find a camera. Everything is recorded. People in the other room are lying on a long chair with a screen above them. They see everything that’s recorded by the bucket. Each time a water drop falls it created sounds, it modifies the music and create abstract movements on the surface of the water. It deforms the video watched by visitors.

Picture I took while under the screen

Picture I took while under the screen

Considering social networks as consumption goods

My recent researches and discussions led me to think about considering the use of social networks as the use of consumption goods.

In economics, a good is a material that satisfies human wants and provides utility, for example, to a consumer making a purchase. A common distinction is made between 'goods' that are tangible property (also called goods) and services, which are non-physical.
— Alan V. Deardorff, 2006. Terms Of Trade: Glossary of International Economics, World Scientific. Online version: Deardorffs' Glossary of International Economics, "good" and "service".

I think I should look at labels on products. What if there were labels to determine the energetic impact of a service on the Internet ? What if the user could scan a tangible representation of the service he’s using to get detailed informations on something he uses in his everyday life ?

It can be a service, or it can be an installation. I think the installation can be interesting and could be implemented in an ecologic store or packaging free shop.

Sketch

Sketch

Innov’eco conference

The conference was very interesting. I was lucky to be invited because I met a lot of experts and startups with projects linked to the environment. I will make individual posts about the startups projects the next days. I learned a lot from the presentation and understood that there are three tiers of energy consumption related to the internet:

  1. terminals
  2. network
  3. data-center

I had a good thought when being careful with the data I had. During the conference Frederic Bordage did not agree with someone claiming he was working on a plugin able to determine our everyday consumption on the web. It is for the same reasons listed in the last article I wrote. The “system” means that there are different parameters to take account of, and it also means that every parameters different for each individual. It means that the data extracted from the plugin can’t be right because it’s not precise enough and it could be misleading for the user.

I continued to make researches about the 0.02gr of CO2 of Twitter. I was surprised that almost every articles I was reading were redirecting me to the blog of Raffi Krikorian, software engineer, and the former VP of Platform Engineering at Twitter. Too bad, because the link article didn’t exist anymore, same for the part of the conference where he speaks about this number…

Thats it, I think that I can’t count on the data I read. The reason is the problem is more complicated, and everything points directly at the data centers like they are energy eater. Some are, but some have green systems to enhance their carbon footprint. The problem is not 100% the energy used while the data centers store data, or when data is send through the network, but when the data centers and the terminals are created. At their creation, they use environmental ressources at a high level.