I&IC Workshop #1 at HEAD: “Soilless”, an ethnographic research

The first workshop in the project corresponds to a preliminary field research phase devoted to understanding people’s relationship with the Cloud. Given our ambition to revisit and explore alternative personal cloud systems, we find it important to investigate actual usage, problems, limits, experiences and situations related to the pervasive use of cloud computing.

 

Soilless – a research introduction and a field study from iiclouds.org design research on Vimeo.

 

Based on a series of user interviews and observations, we will address various issues related to this theme. Our aim is to have a sample of participants which practices have a certain diversity: nomadic workers, third-space users, musicians, VJs, journalists, etc. These interviews will be complemented by an analysis of on-line forums and groups focused on the discussion of cloud-related issues (Dropbox forums, blogs and social media messages discussing the limits and problems of these platforms, etc.).

“Cloud infrastructures and the public’s right to understand it.”

The Creative Time Report has a piece on cloud infrastructures and the public’s right to understand it. The author interestingly describe her discoveries:

In trying to see where data lives, I hoped to better understand how we live with data and, by extension, with the myriad forms of surveillance that it enables. We live with data by pretending that we don’t. The opacity of internet infrastructure and policy—and the insistence that ideally users shouldn’t need to see or understand either—occludes data, the institutions that hold it and the power they exercise with it. Ultimately, in a geography of power, the cloud is not the territory.

Open Compute Project

 

 

The Open Compute Project was initiated by Facebook. They decided to fully open the specifications of their data center in Prineville, all specs (from hardware to software, through cabinet and building design, etc.) In this way, Facebook pioneered the open source approach that many major players are now adopting.

 

This resource will undoubtedly serve our project when it will come to think about the infrastructure.

http://www.opencompute.org/

Meanwhile… The “classical” extra large data center, in 2014

The “classical” approach to the conception of large contemporary data centers could be exemplified by Google: it usually consist of a “shoe box” (large facility with no particular architectural expression, windowless facades), surmounted by big cooling devices. That’s mainly it for the architectural side.

The Home & Personal Data(-Mining) Center

Interestingly, when it comes to experimentation with hardware and The Cloud (or more generally with servers), the most interesting and almost crazy examples are made by the hobbyists and makers who are building and customizing their own data (Bitcoin) mining farms.

It happens in their houses, caves, bathrooms, bedrooms, closets, etc., it seems their are no limits to experimentation. A “house miner” even hacked his own swimming pool to cool down his servers (Portrait of a Bitcoin Miner, link below).

It is almost a subculture of home-brewed personal data-centers, built at home (or at the small office).

 

A few notable examples in pictures above (where we can verify that the questions of cooling and cables organization are for real…)

More insane rigs:

https://99bitcoins.com/20-insane-bitcoin-mining-rigs/

http://www.thinkcomputers.org/insane-crypto-currency-mining-rigs/

 

A portrait of “Eric”, a Bitcoin miner:

bitcoin_farming_14

Eric built a custom cooling system using water from his swimming pool.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043985/portrait-of-a-bitcoin-miner-how-one-man-made-192k-in-virtual-currency.html

 

And more “mining rigs” of all sorts on Google Image…