Behind the Scenes of the Internet: Julian Oliver & Danja Vasiliev
“This week I was in the fortunate position to be able to attend a five
day workshop at de Waag in Amsterdam. Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev
hosted Behind The Scenes of the Internet.”
By Hans de Zwart Director for Bits for freedom http://www.bof.nl/
The workshop opened with a presentation on the influence of engineering
on society. Julian and Danja refer to themselves as critical engineers
and have a clear understanding of the deep influence of technology on
how we relate to each other (“Look at what Easyjet has done to the shape
of Europe.”).
According to them we have more and more black boxes (often locked down)
which place a rich interface (a marketing, business or political
decision) between the person and the device while at the same time being
very intimate to us: think about the iPod Nano in your pocket (and
compare it to the old grammophone). Opening these blackboxes
(essentially hacking) should then be considered research. The right to
open the things we own, if only for study, is increasingly contested.
This is problematic because they think technology you depend upon should
be understood.
They define the Internet as a deeply misunderstood technology that we
have become deeply dependent on. Somebody does own (parts of) the
Internet. When they did a workshop in Peru they found out that all of
the Internet traffic in that country was routed through Telefonica,
giving Spain the hypothetical power to turn off Peru’s Internet when
they want to. The question of geography is interesting on the Internet.
Where are you on the Internet? Can you access your data and get to it?
What will they say when you show up at a data center and request your
files? Olver and Vasiliev consider the cloud to be a dangerous form of
reductionism.
more…
http://blog.hansdezwart.info/2013/03/29/behind-the-scenes-of-the-internet-julian-oliver-danja-vasiliev/
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