DEEP CARBON

Our so-called networked society has failed so far to transpose the logic of interconnectedness into our lives. Citizens are becoming increasingly machine-like and dependent on data, threatening the connection between humans and their natural habitats. Although most of our daily transactions are carried out through electronic devices, we know very little of the apparatus that facilitates such interactions, or in other words, about the factory that lies beyond the interface. The Internet is the biggest “thing” that humanity has ever built. Its massive infrastructure is composed of billions of computers and thousands of kilometers of submarine and inland cables. This immense infrastructure rests on the shoulders of invaluable supporting technologies, largely unnoticed by its audiences; namely human labour, intangible legions of algorithms, and a vast consumption of natural resources. In 2008, the Internet was already responsible for the 2% of CO2 global emissions, exceeding those of the entire aviation Industry. The amount of users and network connections has increased at a whooping pace ever since. Yet despite the growing number of Internet users and information flows, the material representation of the Internet remains blurred in the social imagination.

Lecture in partnership with the Department of Interface Cultures of the Kunstuniversität Linz (http://interface.ufg.at/).