DING a MAGAZINE ABOUT the INTERNET and THINGS #1 AUTUMN 2017 Ding
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DING A MAGAZINE ABOUT THE INTERNET AND THINGS #1 AUTUMN 2017 Ding A magazine about the Internet and things Contents 04 Viewpoint John Thackara 10 Briefing Decentralization 12 Dispatches ThingsCon 14 Interview Gillian Crampton Smith 20 Life & Death Vladan Joler 32 Typographic Craft Pete Thomas & Sean Dooley 43 The Internet as a Lota Jayne Wallace 48 A Medieval Crash Andrew Prescott 54 A Gandhian Dream Babitha George & Romit Raj 61 Evolutionary Craft Justin Marshall 1 Words Images Letter from the Editor John Thackara writes about live Vladan Joler directs the Share Eleni Kalorkoti graduated from Welcome to the first issue of DING, our electronics to the cartels that shorten examples of what a sustainable future Foundation and is a professor at the Edinburgh College of Art in 2007, will be like. These projects, with a focus New Media department at University before training in screenprinting at a magazine about the Internet and things. the lifespan of everyday objects, we begin on social and ecological design, feature of Novi Sad. He investigates invisible Edinburgh Printmakers. She can now We founded this magazine because we saw to see the invisible forces that are making in his Doors of Perception workshops. aspects of technology and recently be found drawing pictures and making He once drove a London bus (routes 73 researched Facebook’s algorithms. things in south London. a gap in the practice of slow, considered IoT a costly endeavor. and 134). making and the breakneck speed of Jayne Wallace is a craft and design Alun Callender is a photographer Solana Larsen edits Mozilla’s Internet professor at Northumbria University. with a passion for portraiture. He is technology. We wanted to anthologize the Ever since humans began making objects, Health Report. Formerly she was She explores digital jewellery and the fascinated by other people, their stories sprawling online conversations and provide we had to consider the materials available managing editor of Global Voices, a act of making to support sense of self. and what inspires them. community of bloggers that translate She focuses on how contemporary craft a place of reflection for people interested and the knowledge of how to shape and report on citizen media worldwide. and the digital can support living with Sean Dooley is a mathematician turned in crafting technology in more responsible them. Justin Marshall recounts how tools She once founded PuertoDansk, a dementia and bereavement. photographer who likes to spend his Danish-Puerto Rican society. time exploring the regions where ways. It is our place of refuge to discuss evolve and adapt based on local needs. Andrew Prescott researches Digital human life meets its habitat. internet health and emerging technologies Historian Andrew Prescott illustrates ThingsCon (Max Krüger, Peter Bihr and Humanities at the University of Simon Höher) is a global community of Glasgow. He is a medieval historian Giulia Garbin is a London based - slowly, sustainably and in print. how constructing medieval cathedrals practitioners around Internet of Things who previously worked in the Art Director, Graphic Designer and required sharing skills and even early (IoT) and connected products that Department of Manuscripts at the Illustrator. She is passionate about foster the creation of a human-centric British Library, where he coordinated traditional print processes and Our inaugural issue focuses on craft. computational thinking. & responsible IoT. a number of digital projects, including believes in the importance of We interview Gillian Crampton Smith, most notably Electronic Beowulf. craftsmanship in design. Gillian Crampton Smith is one of one of the founders of interaction design. We also hear from the ThingsCon the world’s leading academics in Quicksand (Babitha George and Romit She describes the practice of designing community, who curated a map of local interaction design. She founded the Raj) is an interdisciplinary consultancy Computer Related Design department in India that reflects on how a craft the right thing - and designing the thing solutions for local needs. The design at the Royal College of Art (RCA) and approach enables more thoughtful and right. As virtual and physical worlds studio Quicksand in Bangalore reflects co-founded the Design Institute Ivrea. long-lasting products. The studio also She currently teaches at H-Farm curates the UnBox Festival. converge, Gillian argues that we need on how they use a craft approach to Education. craft to inform how we interact with build more thoughtful and long-lasting Justin Marshall is an associate professor at Northumbria University. connected objects. products. The digital jeweler Jayne He is a practice-based researcher Wallace describes how the Eames’ India focusing on the role and value of craft in interdisciplinary digitally John Thackara, renowned author and Report, written over fifty years ago, orientated research projects, as such he critic, writes that the Internet of Things provides a template for how to think is interested in both digital craft and crafting the digital. is missing a value benchmark. ”We’ve about craft and the internet today. created a global infrastructure that is brilliant on means, but unambitious when Todaye w live with digital technology that’s it comes to ends,” he laments. How might primarily manufactured in Shenzhen and we build technology that considers the designed in Silicon Valley. Centralization of true cost of production while respecting production means that there is less choice Editors human dignity and repairing the Earth? and less inclusion. We need decentralized ecosystems, where craft thrives so that Jon Rogers is an academic at the Pete Thomas is a designer and Michelle Thorne leads the Mozilla Craft considers the materiality of an people can deploy the materials around University of Dundee and is a researcher at the University of Dundee. Open IoT Studio, a research network object throughout the object’s lifecycle. them to make local solutions that last a Senior Fellow with Mozilla’s Open He co-founded the creative studio Tom for practitioners investigating and IoT Studio. His work explores the Pigeon and the design and innovation advocating for a healthier Internet Researcher Vladan Joler investigates the long time. We hope you enjoy this issue human intersection between digital agency Uniform. of Things. She previously directed death and afterlife of things. From the and that it sparks ideas for crafting technologies and the design of physical Mozilla’s web literacy programs and of things. produced the Mozilla Festival. graveyards of the cargo ships that carry technology in healthier ways. Michelle when we connect with living systems emotionally and not just rationally, things really begin to change... Viewpoint John Thackara Illustration Eleni Kalorkoti 4 5 Viewpoint John Thackara On a recent visit to Barcelona, I was charmed by the Institute for Advanced We once knew better. For much of human history, the idea that the world Architecture of Catalonia’s Smart Citizen platform that enables citizens to monitor around us is ‘vital’ was common knowledge. Greek philosophers known as levels of air or noise pollution around their home or business. The system connects hylozoists made no distinction between animate and inanimate, spirit and data, people and knowledge based on their location; the device’s low power matter. Roman sages thought likewise. In his epic work On The Nature of consumption allows it to be placed on balconies Things, the poet Lucretius argued that everything is connected, deep down, and windowsills where power is provided by a solar in a world of matter and energy. Chinese philosophers, too, believed that the we lust panel or battery. Smart Citizen is just one among a ultimate reality of the world is intrinsically connective; in the Tao, everything growing array of devices and platforms that can sense in the universe, whether animate or inanimate, is embedded - a stream of for speed, everything from the health of a tomato in Brazil, to continuous flow and change. Buddhist texts, too, evoke a universe that’s in a bacteria in the stomach of a cow in Perthshire - remotely. state of ceaseless movement and connection. In seventeenth century Europe, perfection This innovation is welcome, but it leaves a difficult the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza conceived of existence as a continuum, question unanswered: Under what circumstances an inseparable tangle of body, mind, ideas and matter. and control will possession of this data contribute to the system The belief that matter matters, so to speak, was then obscured for two transformation that we so urgently need? What’s intense centuries. First, by the fire and smoke of the thermo-industrial economy, missing, so far - from the Internet of Things in general, and, more recently, by global communication networks. Now, as this self- and remote sensing in particular - is a value benchmark against which to analyze devouring system unravels, the healing idea that that we are part of a world the data being generated. We’ve created a global infrastructure that is brilliant on of living things, not separate from it, is resurfacing. Developments in science means, but unambitious when it comes to ends. have done much to confirm the proposition A word on the background. Our whole society has been rendered cognitively that no organism is truly autonomous. blind by a metabolic rift between man and the earth. Paved surfaces, and pervasive These discoveries do much to close the metabolic we are part media, shield us from direct experience of the damage we’re inflicting on soils, rift. In diverse context, Gaia theory, systems oceans and forests. The metabolic rift explains how we’re able put the health of thinking, and resilience science, have shown of a world of ‘the economy’ above all other concerns. We lust for speed, perfection and control that our planet is a web of interdependent but, because we inhabit an abstract, digitally diminished world, we’re blind to the ecosystems.