Microsoft's "We Live in the Cloud": https://news.microsoft.com/stories/microsoft-datacenter-tour/
Solar Protocol Network: http://solarprotocol.net/index.html (as of posting, opening on a server in Queens!)
Microsoft's "We Live in the Cloud": https://news.microsoft.com/stories/microsoft-datacenter-tour/
Solar Protocol Network: http://solarprotocol.net/index.html (as of posting, opening on a server in Queens!)
Dear Hamsini,
ReplyDeleteThank you for presenting this fascinating object by Microsoft. It had me thinking a lot about climate change, predictive analytics, proxies, and Anatomy of an AI. and also just the homogenous and clean design that happens in these Big Tech office spaces. As a marketing tool that uses predictive analytics to address environmental concerns, I am recalling a shorter chapter in Wendy Chun’s Discriminating Data and the use of proxies to construct climate change predictions. In this shorter chapter, Chun highlights how climatologists visualize global warming through “proxies” and “matrix factorization methods” (26). Proxies might best be understood through an example. According to Chun, climatologists construct climate change predictions by reconstructing the past through statistical methods and proxy data. This data might include measurements of tree rings, yet it’s accumulated from climate change patterns over the past few centuries in order to predict the future and accept it as truth. This role of proxy seems apparent regarding what Microsoft is trying to do here, although I am also struck by it taking to the next level as a 3D model with an interior office space. While this work also incorporates some staggering predictive analytics, it also comprises an array of design elements from the 3d model, to happy branding of ‘communities,’ and an extractive US parasite reframed as a ‘neighbor.’ All of this clean, homogenous, and friendly design reframes also supports an ethos behind the proxies and predictive analytics of environmental responsibility. It’s hard to take this piece seriously at all. Moreover, I’ve been thinking about this work in relation to Anatomy of an AI, as both encompass the material and immaterial connections for a Big Tech company. It’s interesting for me, to posit the role visual design does in Anatomy of AI in actually conveying the ugly data, verses this proxy version of the ruth from Microsoft.
Works Cited:
Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. “On Patterns and Proxies, or the Perils of Reconstructing the Unknown.” E-Flux, Sept. 2018, https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/accumulation/212275/on-patterns-and-proxies/.
Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong, and Alex Barnett. Discriminating Data: Correlation, Neighborhoods, and the New Politics of Recognition. MIT Press, 2021.
Marisol Vasquez Non-Core Post 14 / 10
DeleteReally enjoyed this presentation. The media here circle a paradox: we are told that the cloud is not something "magical," placeless or diffuse, but at the same time the cloud's physical infrastructure has to be rendered as a beautiful marvel of design. This reminds me of the infrastructural equivalent of the way premier tech offices have emerged as "campuses." They are sites of rigidly hierarchical exploitation, but they have to be imagined as beautiful, clean, futuristic, and a second home for those who work there. Here we are encouraged to think of the physical infrastructure if we must but, rather than dwell on the amount of power and water consumed in the cooling process, we are asked to marvel at how "advanced" these cooling technologies are. We are told that the cloud is not "magical" or placeless, but the script asks us to revel in the fact that this particular cloud configuration is backed up by servers in large cities around the world. Also conspicuous is the security theater, where we see technologies like biometric surveillance (here regulating access to infrastructure) appearing as something that can help us to rest easy and put our faith in the cloud.
ReplyDeletenon-core post 7/10
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