I&IC’s public survey of 356 links related to “Clouds” on Pinboard – last updated 03.2017

By Tuesday, March 21, 2017 Resources, Thinking, X-Posts Tags: 0146, Architects, Architecture, Clouds, Data, Datacenter, Designers, Designers (interaction), Designers (product), Hardware, Links, Scientists, Software, Thinkers Permalink 0

https://pinboard.in/u:toorop/t:i%2526ic_designresearch/

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Along the design research, we are going through many different types of references that we don’t necessarily post or document on the blog. We usually only post about the ones that we consider relevant to the research process, which doesn’t mean the other ones are not interesting. We’ve just decided not to dig deeper into them at some point, or to keep some of them for later.

Yet, this is a consistent amount of survey that we are leaving on the side of the road and that could possibly be useful for similar or later researches. At least a good starting point… That’s why we’ve created this i&ic_designresearch tag on Pinboard.

Interestingly, some new thematics emerged along the way within these links, like for example on the technological branch, the combination of personal cloud based services, peer to peer protocols and blockchains that were not on the radar when we started our research.

 

Bratton H. B. (2016). The Stack, On Software and Sovereignty

By Friday, May 27, 2016 Design, Resources, Sciences & Technology, Thinking, X-Posts Tags: 0131, ABCD, Books, Cloud, Data, Infrastructure, Internet, Networks, Research, Thinkers Permalink 0

the_stack

“(…). In an account that is both theoretical and technical, drawing on political philosophy, architectural theory, and software studies, Bratton explores six layers of The Stack: Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface, User.

Each is mapped on its own terms and understood as a component within the larger whole built from hard and soft systems intermingling — not only computational forms but also social, human and physical forces. This model, informed by the logic of the multilayered structure of protocol “stacks”, in which network technologies operate within a modular and vertical order, offers a comprehensive image of our emerging infrastructure and a platform for its ongoing reinvention. (…).”

 

Note: recently published by the MIT Press — as well as quoted as a work in progress by Lucien Langton in a post back in 2015 — comes this book by Prof. Benjamin H. Bratton.

It consists in a comprehensive analysis, both technical and phylosophical of what we could call “The Cloud”, yet what Bratton describes as a world scale “stack” consisting in 6 layers: Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface, User (and which interestingly is not so distant to our own approach considering the user, the interface, the infrastructure and the territory).

Hu T.-H. (2015). A Prehistory of The Cloud

By Thursday, May 12, 2016 Resources, Thinking, X-Posts Tags: 0130, ABCD, Books, Clouds, History, Infrastructure, Internet, Networks, Thinkers Permalink 0

a_prehistory

“We may imagine the digital cloud as placeless, mute, ethereal, and unmediated. Yet the reality of the cloud is embodied in thousands of data centers, any one of which can use as much electricity as a midsized town. Even all these data centers are only one small part of the cloud. Behind that cloud-shaped icon on our screens is a whole universe of technologies and cultural norms, all working to keep us from noticing their existence. In this book, Tung-Hui Hu examines the gap between the real and the virtual (sic) in our understanding of the cloud. (…)”

 

Note: while we do not necessarily follow Mr. Hu in all is assertions, we found it very interesting to digg into the potential past of this physical and digital construct (the cloud), even so it obviously mingles its own past with the one of the Internet, and previously with telegraph/telephone lines and railways that served as the initial paths for these “lines”.

Very interesting is also the part that presents the invention of the “user”, coming from an initial idea of sharing a common resource. It indeed seems that the “user” emerged from the ideas and technologies of “time-sharing”, then “multiprocessing”, when a single mainframe computer could remain stuck by a single user’s computations for hours or even days, sometimes for no results (error in the code).

Old web today, by Rhizome

By Monday, January 18, 2016 Interaction Design, Resources, Sciences & Technology, Thinking, X-Posts Tags: 0126, Clouds, D, Interaction, Interface, Links, Networks, Users, Web Permalink 0

http://rhizome.org/editorial/2015/nov/30/oldweb-today/

(…) Today’s web browsers want to be invisible, merging with the visual environment of the desktop in an effort to convince users to treat “the cloud” as just an extension of their hard drive.

In the 1990s, browser design took nearly the opposite approach, using iconography associated with travel to convey the feeling of going on a journey. Netscape Navigator, which used a ship’s helm as its logo, made a very direct link with the nautical origins of the prefix cyber-, while Internet Explorer’s logo promised to take the user around the whole globe. (…)

By Rhizome.org

Dead Drops and Keepalive by A. Bartholl

By Wednesday, October 28, 2015 Art, Resources, X-Posts Tags: 0116, D, Data, Interaction, Object, Situated, Storage Permalink 0

bartholl_deadkeep_00

Note: we mentioned the project Dead Drops (2010), by artist Aram Bartholl, in the foundation document of our design research Inhabiting & Interfacing the Cloud(s). The project was about passive memory sticks (usb keys) that were inserted into public streets walls, for anybody to drop or pick files.

A. Bartholl recently published a new project, Keepalive, which also presents a public, situated (rural or into the wild) and almost ritual interaction with files.

Both projects are presented below in more details, but what interests us in these two cases is this different interaction with files that is proposed. Both physical and that brings a different meaning to the interaction itself: a special type of (situated) interaction to access specific files. Something quite different therefore than a general purpose type of interaction (“clic” with a mouse or “tap” with a finger) to access any type of files (current situation with cloud storage).

In the continuity of the workshop we held about physical bot objects that manipulate data, “Botcaves” - Networked Data Objects, this is certainly a track we’ll like to pursue and digg into during the next steps of this project.

Continue Reading…

Reblog > The cloud

By Monday, October 26, 2015 Resources, Thinking, X-Posts Tags: 0115, Clouds, Datacenter, Energy, History, Infrastructure, Sustainability, Thinkers Permalink 0

Note: after a Summer “pause” mostly dedicated to a mid-term exhibition and publication of our joint design-research, we are preparing to dive again into the I&IC project for 18 months. This will first happen next November through a couple of new workshops with guest designers/partners (Dev Joshi from Random International at ECAL and Sascha Pohflepp at HEAD). We will take the occasion to further test different approaches and ideas about “The cloud”. We will then move into following steps of our work, focused around the development of a few “counter-propositional” artifacts.

But before diving again, I take the occasion to reblog an article by James Bridle published earlier this year and that could act as an excellent reminder of our initial questions, so as a good way to relaunch our research. Interestingly, Brindle focuses on the infrastructural aspects of the cloud (mostly pointing out the “hard” parts of it), which may in fact become the main focus of our research as well in this second phase. Scaled down certainly…

 

Via Icon (thanks Lucien for the reference)

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cloud_copy

 

There’s something comforting about the wispy metaphor for the network that underpins most aspects of our daily lives. It’s easy to forget the reality of its vast physical infrastructure

Continue Reading…