I must admit, before reading Hogan's piece I saw that it was written in 2015 and thought to myself "you have no idea how worse it gets." Hogan provokes us to think about the sheer amount of energy (electricity, material, labor) an online network requires to operate. The data structures that companies like Facebook employ are built on collection, storage, and optimization. I think policies like CCPA and GDPR have promoted discourses around data storage, and letting users know that their data is actively and intentionally stored. The anecdote of the user who was given over a thousand pages of data upon retrieval after just three years of use reminded me of Rohan's presentation. I believe Rohan alluded to this, but the data he was provided was merely a fraction of a percent of the data that they disclose that they have of his. There is so much more data, infrastructure, and labor required that we don't even know about.
We have had several discussions this semester about labor and (in)visibility and this article alluded it to in a way I had never thought about. With the digital, there is often this notion that it takes up less space, less waste, and is more efficient and cleaner (in a number of ways). Instead of 1000 books, you can have one iPad, instead of 100 CDs, cassettes, or records, you have one iPod/iPhone, etc. The archive, as a living and continuously expanding mechanism is labor-intensive and requires all of those things mentioned previously, that the digital or wireless seem to make disappear for the user. Not to mention that these data centers also require physical labor, where race, gender, and class are exploited to upkeep.
Ensmenger writes about the infrastructure of the internet in a very Science and Technology Studies manner. These infrastructures play an integral role in allowing for the full functionality of these technological systems and their embedded impact on our daily lives. Similarly to how Sarah Roberts alluded to the invisibility of the role of content moderators, infrastructures are not meant to be seen. Ensmenger says, "Technologies become infrastructure only after they are perfected to the point of being routine. We notice them only when they fail "(pg. S14). The physical materiality of these large technological systems thus are designed to stay out of sight, while being deeply embedded into our lives.
I chose to read Violet Pinto's E-waste hazard: The impending challenge as well as Priyadharshini and Meenambal article titled, A survey on electronic waste management in Coimbatore. Pinto's text on electronic waste can be thought of as quite productively situated in the context of postcolonial technology studies. In this space of thought, technology can be understood as a political, economic, and social tool that legitimizes India, as a postcolonial state in the eyes of the Western world. Through technology, India is able to "develop" and integrate and compete with Western markets of technology, data, and other forms of knowledge production. However, this comes at a hefty price. Each year, the projected growth of this hazardous waste from technological growth is 34%, a disastrous number for both environmental and health concerns.
Through a similar lens, Priyadharshini and Meenambal look at electronic waste in India, acknowledging the economic development it has not only brought but produced. And due to its recent emergence and the newness of these technological industries, we simply do not know how to deal with it and how to do so safely. In line with the points made in the other readings this week, digital, technological, and electrical tools and systems are so embedded into our lives are we are simply dependent on them to ensure that society functions as we intent. However, with that dependency, we have to deal with the sheer toxicity of the materiality of these notions of progress and development. This article, through studying what types of technological objects people in Coimbatore dispose, along with when and how, attempts to better understand how to deal with the impending issue of increasing health and environmental problems.
Thanks for drawing the connection between Hogan's piece and my presentation. I think there's an interesting opportunity to apply Hogan's media studies-oriented analysis of data centers as archives to surveillance studies by combining it with Simone Browne's reading of the politics of archives. Surveillance is often conceptualized as an act or a process; for example, digital surveillance is often represented through data collection. But how do we account for the role of data centers in digital surveillance? Are they simply sites, or are they actors? They certainly aren't static if we consider the enormous environmental costs that Hogan accounts for, or the potential for instability and dynamism that Chun wrote about in her article about code. How do data centers open up new questions about the political stakes of surveillance as a sociotechnical system rather than a process?
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