Clouds that Breathe
Originally published in DAMN Magazine
Have you ever thought about growing your own cloud? Not one of those fluffy beings in the sky but a concealed data-cloud containing an almost unfathomable mix of digital files, from tinder swipes to corporate emails, Instagram-posts to meteorological data. While today your data exists on faraway servers connected via the internet, literally serving information to other computers, what if instead your data was alive, could reproduce, flourish, and even spread?
In an age of global warming, going green and climate strikes, as good planetary citizens we take care to avoid unnecessary energy consumption, try our best to recycle and keep our carbon emissions to a minimum. Still, despite our cycling to work or meat-free Mondays, there is another growing source of carbon emissions, another new threat based on a consumption cycle that is driving us towards a future of ‘data warming’
In a digital world, watching videos, taking photos or asking for directions, means more data flowing into an invisible cloud. Yet this cloud is far less fluffy than we think, with megalithic structures housing wall-to-wall racks of silicon servers, consuming absurd amounts of electricity. Today, global data centres use more energy than the entire UK, and by 2025 surging demand for on-demand internet platforms and services means they will use more than 20% of our Global Energy supply.
Away from the urban masses, giant data centres are slowly taking over rural areas. They not only store the digital aspects of daily lives, but also process them to ‘optimise’ human existence. Algorithms help track and make use of the ever increasing accumulated digital knowledge stock. Rather than seeking to identify and remove unnecessary data, it is compulsively hoarded, since additional data storage has close to zero marginal cost, but a hugely positive marginal benefit. Through a contemporary economic lens, this provides incentives for society to produce more. Therein lies the problem.
The economics of data storage, like the economics of nearly every system we rely upon, filters out any costs which are not immediately felt in monetary terms. So Big Data, like Big Oil before it, is able to extract huge profits without facing up to the true cost of their activities. Today companies that deal in data are the largest in the world. Google has established a global network of data centres, with more than 15 now spread across three continents. Apple uses proprietary and third-party computing resources to keep its 1.5 billions devices running at all times. Amazon, the world’s largest company, known for online retail, in fact earns the majority of its profits from its cloud computing solutions.
While the profits of these companies soar, the carbon emissions from the data industry also rise exponentially. From close to zero in the 1980s, the CO2 emitted now rivals that of the aviation industry, around 4% of global CO2 emissions. Meanwhile the algorithms grow thirstier. Advances in cryptocurrencies and in particular machine learning require ever more intensive use of computing resources, not to mention water for cooling, intensifying the strain on fragile ecosystems, scarce resources and exacerbating Data Warming.
So while we wait patiently for the companies to change due to their inherent self interest, or even more patiently for an economic system that factors in massive negative present and future externalities like the climate crisis, what might you do as a citizen? At an individual level you can become aware of this situation. You then might try unplugging your WiFi. Deactivating your online accounts. Throwing your smartphone away. These perhaps noble activities in all reality would probably count for nothing. Data would still be compiled on you, and everything around you through the global complex of connected information technology that has developed over decades.
We need real alternatives to help get us out of this strange loop of consumption, production, waste and destruction. Despite increasing personal proclivity to switch to more climate positive behaviours, systems continue to be built without considering the true cost, especially the costs beyond constructed society. The correlation between rising data consumption and rising carbon emissions is just history repeating itself. The wicked maelstrom of the anthropocene. The latest in an ongoing saga of tales of human society and behavioural cycles causing harm and violating ecosystems.
So where might we find potential ways to redress this balance? Of all the systems that exist on the planet, those that have formed organically, through billions of years of evolution seem to be the most effective in terms of carbon processing. It should come as no surprise then that we humans might turn to nature for inspiration, and start looking to incorporate biology back into our systems, in unexpected ways.
Scientists in recent decades have been exploring the feasibility of large-scale alternative data storage through a variety of methods. One method in particular works with the oldest storage device in the world, and is also one of the most promising ways of solving our data management problems. This new technology has the potential to store all of the world’s data in just 1 kg of material. It can last a remarkably long time in the right conditions and the format in theory would never become obsolete. The method is biological data storage. The format is DNA.
A team of artists and scientists are working to understand what this type of technology might offer society, ecosystems and the planet. Grow Your Own Cloud is an initiative that looks to create a new materiality around data, beyond the silicon and rare earth metals inherent to modern computing. The idea looks beyond perceived reality by embedding the most highly valued commodity, data, within nature, to not only prevent further destruction, but present new opportunities for the expansion of natural habitats and the regeneration of the environment.
The team’s work began in 2018, as a speculative exploration, involving the creation of pop-up interventions, that enabled the public to engage with complex themes around data, the climate crisis and genetic modification. Using artistic and design techniques, they transformed a local flower-shop, the well-known Blomsterskuret in Copenhagen, into a decentralised data-centre. Set within this environment, visitors were able to explore DNA data storage by experiencing what it would be like to embed their data in plants, learning about the unique data storage characteristics of flora, while being introduced to scientific concepts and new possibilities to unlock deeper curiosity.
Each time we introduce technology, and particularly in this case, we unearth a plethora of fascinating ethical questions. The Data Flower-Shop was a platform for dialogue around these questions. What is the impact of the new data on the plant? Imagine the plant pollinates, how could data privacy issues be impacted? What if the plant dies, should the data die within the plant? Can you replant your data?
In many regards, simply thinking about data in this light might change our interactions with data storage and consumption, transforming a relationship that is remote and technical, into something intimate and alive, through living and ‘breathing’ organisms that become the hosts of the digital aspects of our lives.
The core team of the project are founders Cyrus Clarke and Monika Seyfried. Yet GYOC is a truly collaborative platform involving scientists at the University of Copenhagen, designers, architects and crucially collaboration with molecular and DNA data scientist Jeff Nivala, Principle Investigator at the Molecular Information Systems Lab, University of Washington. Annelie Berner, a Principle Investigator at CIID Research, collaborates with the team on ethics. This blend of skills enables Grow Your Own Cloud to develop an increasing array of DNA Data based explorations.
The latest implementation of the project is entitled The Data Garden, a new type of data infrastructure that promotes unification between people, ecosystems and technology. The installation features plants encoded with data. The encoding process involves converting digital data such as text, JPEGs and MP3s into a biological format, DNA, using ACGT rather than binary.
Developed for SXSW 2020, within the installation plants’ DNA is decoded using the latest genetic sequencing technologies, and displayed in space, revealing hidden messages. Working with nature, the Data Garden invites visitors to experience a new materiality around data, and explore a world in which data storage is truly green, and exists as an accessible public resource that is shareable within communities.
As a constructed organism the Data Garden combines not only biological and technological elements, but produces an immersive, constantly changing environment, in which humans and nonhumans learn, evolve and grow. This type of plant-based data centre allows organisms of various types to flourish, marrying principles of working with nature and data, to create self-sufficient plant-data ecosystems.
GYOC seeks to create new types of data infrastructure; typologies which invert our current relations to data, rendering data open and available to everyone, creating new opportunities for green space, subverting notions of the privatised digital information economy, and crucially absorbing carbon from the atmosphere.
Through initiating these sites of investigation, GYOC researches the limits of today’s biological technologies and investigates the use cases for potential future applications. The objective is to gain a better understanding of people’s relationships towards their data to help develop the ethical and environmental parameters for developing tomorrow’s technologies.
With scientists at ETH Zurich recently announcing that the planting of 1.2 trillion trees could help absorb more carbon than human emissions, the idea of exchanging the enormous, carbon emitting, industrial data farms, with life-giving, oxygen producing, aesthetic data forests, seems tempting enough to start looking into finding ways to make this a reality.
Creating a sustainable way to archive data, even a fraction of the accumulated big data, could be vital to help prevent the climate crisis. Assisting in the advancement of biological data storage, and nature inspired technology development in general, within a conscious and critical context, helps to evoke and inspire new systems based around respecting more-than-human life to create a harmonious and restorative future.
Clouds that Breathe
Originally published in DAMN Magazine
Have you ever thought about growing your own cloud? Not one of those fluffy beings in the sky but a concealed data-cloud containing an almost unfathomable mix of digital files, from tinder swipes to corporate emails, Instagram-posts to meteorological data. While today your data exists on faraway servers connected via the internet, literally serving information to other computers, what if instead your data was alive, could reproduce, flourish, and even spread?
In an age of global warming, going green and climate strikes, as good planetary citizens we take care to avoid unnecessary energy consumption, try our best to recycle and keep our carbon emissions to a minimum. Still, despite our cycling to work or meat-free Mondays, there is another growing source of carbon emissions, another new threat based on a consumption cycle that is driving us towards a future of ‘data warming’
In a digital world, watching videos, taking photos or asking for directions, means more data flowing into an invisible cloud. Yet this cloud is far less fluffy than we think, with megalithic structures housing wall-to-wall racks of silicon servers, consuming absurd amounts of electricity. Today, global data centres use more energy than the entire UK, and by 2025 surging demand for on-demand internet platforms and services means they will use more than 20% of our Global Energy supply.
Away from the urban masses, giant data centres are slowly taking over rural areas. They not only store the digital aspects of daily lives, but also process them to ‘optimise’ human existence. Algorithms help track and make use of the ever increasing accumulated digital knowledge stock. Rather than seeking to identify and remove unnecessary data, it is compulsively hoarded, since additional data storage has close to zero marginal cost, but a hugely positive marginal benefit. Through a contemporary economic lens, this provides incentives for society to produce more. Therein lies the problem.
The economics of data storage, like the economics of nearly every system we rely upon, filters out any costs which are not immediately felt in monetary terms. So Big Data, like Big Oil before it, is able to extract huge profits without facing up to the true cost of their activities. Today companies that deal in data are the largest in the world. Google has established a global network of data centres, with more than 15 now spread across three continents. Apple uses proprietary and third-party computing resources to keep its 1.5 billions devices running at all times. Amazon, the world’s largest company, known for online retail, in fact earns the majority of its profits from its cloud computing solutions.
While the profits of these companies soar, the carbon emissions from the data industry also rise exponentially. From close to zero in the 1980s, the CO2 emitted now rivals that of the aviation industry, around 4% of global CO2 emissions. Meanwhile the algorithms grow thirstier. Advances in cryptocurrencies and in particular machine learning require ever more intensive use of computing resources, not to mention water for cooling, intensifying the strain on fragile ecosystems, scarce resources and exacerbating Data Warming.
So while we wait patiently for the companies to change due to their inherent self interest, or even more patiently for an economic system that factors in massive negative present and future externalities like the climate crisis, what might you do as a citizen? At an individual level you can become aware of this situation. You then might try unplugging your WiFi. Deactivating your online accounts. Throwing your smartphone away. These perhaps noble activities in all reality would probably count for nothing. Data would still be compiled on you, and everything around you through the global complex of connected information technology that has developed over decades.
We need real alternatives to help get us out of this strange loop of consumption, production, waste and destruction. Despite increasing personal proclivity to switch to more climate positive behaviours, systems continue to be built without considering the true cost, especially the costs beyond constructed society. The correlation between rising data consumption and rising carbon emissions is just history repeating itself. The wicked maelstrom of the anthropocene. The latest in an ongoing saga of tales of human society and behavioural cycles causing harm and violating ecosystems.
So where might we find potential ways to redress this balance? Of all the systems that exist on the planet, those that have formed organically, through billions of years of evolution seem to be the most effective in terms of carbon processing. It should come as no surprise then that we humans might turn to nature for inspiration, and start looking to incorporate biology back into our systems, in unexpected ways.
Scientists in recent decades have been exploring the feasibility of large-scale alternative data storage through a variety of methods. One method in particular works with the oldest storage device in the world, and is also one of the most promising ways of solving our data management problems. This new technology has the potential to store all of the world’s data in just 1 kg of material. It can last a remarkably long time in the right conditions and the format in theory would never become obsolete. The method is biological data storage. The format is DNA.
A team of artists and scientists are working to understand what this type of technology might offer society, ecosystems and the planet. Grow Your Own Cloud is an initiative that looks to create a new materiality around data, beyond the silicon and rare earth metals inherent to modern computing. The idea looks beyond perceived reality by embedding the most highly valued commodity, data, within nature, to not only prevent further destruction, but present new opportunities for the expansion of natural habitats and the regeneration of the environment.
The team’s work began in 2018, as a speculative exploration, involving the creation of pop-up interventions, that enabled the public to engage with complex themes around data, the climate crisis and genetic modification. Using artistic and design techniques, they transformed a local flower-shop, the well-known Blomsterskuret in Copenhagen, into a decentralised data-centre. Set within this environment, visitors were able to explore DNA data storage by experiencing what it would be like to embed their data in plants, learning about the unique data storage characteristics of flora, while being introduced to scientific concepts and new possibilities to unlock deeper curiosity.
Each time we introduce technology, and particularly in this case, we unearth a plethora of fascinating ethical questions. The Data Flower-Shop was a platform for dialogue around these questions. What is the impact of the new data on the plant? Imagine the plant pollinates, how could data privacy issues be impacted? What if the plant dies, should the data die within the plant? Can you replant your data?
In many regards, simply thinking about data in this light might change our interactions with data storage and consumption, transforming a relationship that is remote and technical, into something intimate and alive, through living and ‘breathing’ organisms that become the hosts of the digital aspects of our lives.
The core team of the project are founders Cyrus Clarke and Monika Seyfried. Yet GYOC is a truly collaborative platform involving scientists at the University of Copenhagen, designers, architects and crucially collaboration with molecular and DNA data scientist Jeff Nivala, Principle Investigator at the Molecular Information Systems Lab, University of Washington. Annelie Berner, a Principle Investigator at CIID Research, collaborates with the team on ethics. This blend of skills enables Grow Your Own Cloud to develop an increasing array of DNA Data based explorations.
The latest implementation of the project is entitled The Data Garden, a new type of data infrastructure that promotes unification between people, ecosystems and technology. The installation features plants encoded with data. The encoding process involves converting digital data such as text, JPEGs and MP3s into a biological format, DNA, using ACGT rather than binary.
Developed for SXSW 2020, within the installation plants’ DNA is decoded using the latest genetic sequencing technologies, and displayed in space, revealing hidden messages. Working with nature, the Data Garden invites visitors to experience a new materiality around data, and explore a world in which data storage is truly green, and exists as an accessible public resource that is shareable within communities.
As a constructed organism the Data Garden combines not only biological and technological elements, but produces an immersive, constantly changing environment, in which humans and nonhumans learn, evolve and grow. This type of plant-based data centre allows organisms of various types to flourish, marrying principles of working with nature and data, to create self-sufficient plant-data ecosystems.
GYOC seeks to create new types of data infrastructure; typologies which invert our current relations to data, rendering data open and available to everyone, creating new opportunities for green space, subverting notions of the privatised digital information economy, and crucially absorbing carbon from the atmosphere.
Through initiating these sites of investigation, GYOC researches the limits of today’s biological technologies and investigates the use cases for potential future applications. The objective is to gain a better understanding of people’s relationships towards their data to help develop the ethical and environmental parameters for developing tomorrow’s technologies.
With scientists at ETH Zurich recently announcing that the planting of 1.2 trillion trees could help absorb more carbon than human emissions, the idea of exchanging the enormous, carbon emitting, industrial data farms, with life-giving, oxygen producing, aesthetic data forests, seems tempting enough to start looking into finding ways to make this a reality.
Creating a sustainable way to archive data, even a fraction of the accumulated big data, could be vital to help prevent the climate crisis. Assisting in the advancement of biological data storage, and nature inspired technology development in general, within a conscious and critical context, helps to evoke and inspire new systems based around respecting more-than-human life to create a harmonious and restorative future.