Mél Hogan 😷 🏳️🌈 🍪 🫠
@mel_hogan
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Critical media/infrastructure scholar interested in the meaning(s) we make of perpetual tech promises. Focused on the environment. 🎙️ Podcast: The Data Fix
Kingston, Ontario
Joined February 2011
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do we all just keep working through covid and wild fires and extreme heat and political grief and genocides and and and
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in the early days covid denial was a right wing thing and now it's an everyone thing
This entire thread is so infuriating. We don’t need you to “own” that you are spreading misinformation, we need you to stop doing it. We need your party to stop doing it. We need your party to stop inviting doctors to tell the public they have “immunity” to covid bc it polls well
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sometimes people offer to mask when they see me masking and I think that they think that they’re accommodating my special needs but I think I’m in fact accommodating their denial and am exhausted at this dance
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A.I. tools fueled a 34% spike in Microsoft’s water consumption, and one city with its data centers is concerned about the effect on residential supply
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Many in media studies have been flagging this for 10+ years…
AI is starting to look like a colonialist enterprise: helping the world’s largest tech companies grow their power and wealth, spurring competition between empires racing to capture new markets, and threatening to supercharge government surveillance.
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Data centers are draining resources in water-stressed communities
A single data center can consume up to 5 million gallons of drinking water per day.
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I like to post this once in awhile when I'm writing about data centers; I have an open biblio here that anyone can use or add to:
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Water was always a problem for data, made worse with AI. I tracked this 10+ years ago:
And 500 mL of water used (for cooling systems) for every 10-50 prompts in ChatGPT. So technological revolution must also consider water security.
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If you're a grad student (based anywhere) and you would like extra mentorship and guidance on your MA or PhD project, consider applying to be a grad scholar in residence at the EML.
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AI's Energy Demands Are Out of Control. Welcome to the Internet's Hyper-Consumption Era
Generative artificial intelligence tools, now part of the everyday user experience online, are causing stress on local power grids and mass water evaporation.
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like, can people think and function in this or just pretend for a while longer
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Before this site fully dies, I'd like to say that if you need me in the new year, I'll be in Film and Media at Queen's University (Kingston). I'll stay on as Adjunct at the University of Calgary for a few years, to complete great collabs and supervise awesome students. ✌️
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think of AI less as a technology and more as a necrotic future-setting agenda
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Rethinking the Inevitability of AI: The Environmental and Social Impacts of Computing in Historical Context
Conference Schedule & Program
July 18th, 2024
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As someone who has been tracking (warning?) about this for a decade+ what I’m noting now are the different thresholds for what feels urgent or a big enough problem
Data centre power use 'to surge six-fold in 10 years'
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☁️ ☁️ ☁️ ☁️
Hi data center people!
I'm soft launching this site which documents art at the intersection of the
#cloud
/
#datacenters
/
#environmentalmedia
It's an index-in-progress. I hope it serves as a good reference/ catalog for all!
☁️ ☁️ ☁️ ☁️
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Please subscribe to The Data Fix! ♥️🎙️🙏🏽☺️
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@carathewalton
@CorsIAQ
we built some too!
@UCalgary
where it seems that engineering against the pandemic has been taken on mostly by arts and humanities scholars
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“The carbon footprint of creating ChatGPT isn’t public information…”
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Grad (MA, Phd) students (based anywhere) looking for extra mentorship, please consider our March 2024 [online] residency program at the EML:
Theme: Extractive Media
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I guess this is official/public now?
Happy to work on “Genomic Media” with these great artists-scientists-scholars:
@bestqualitycrab
@G_Y_O_C
@Kyra_Goni
🧬 🧬
@SSHRC_CRSH
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Very hard to reckon with the fact that these past few years -- as hard as they've been -- are likely the best years we'll have had for the next few ...decades
I really can't make this point strongly enough.
This is just the very beginning.
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In conclusion, we can either have big tech ai or we can have a liveable planet.
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This looks cool 👇
Call for Submissions
Re-Shaping AI: Controversy, Closure, and Critique
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Have been reading this book all day and it’s a work of art. It’s one of the best books I’ve read in years. Everyone should read it.
I'm thrilled to announce that my book, Camera Geologica, which explores the material links between extraction and photography, is forthcoming with
@DukePress
. I couldn't be more excited to be working with
@kwissoker
and
@ryan_c_kendall
on this.
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"Your Artificial Future is Repulsive: On Climate Change, Data Tech, and Artifice"
By: Theodora Dryer
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🚨NEW PODCAST🚨
I've started a new project called The Data Fix, which you can preview here:
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Microsoft, Meta and others face rising drought risk to their data centers
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💥Call for Papers:
Rethinking the Inevitability of AI: The Environmental and Social Impacts of Computing in Historical Context
April 22, 2024: 300-500 word paper proposals due
July 18, 2024: Date of online conference
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there’s a conversation happening on bksy about how tech crit makes up words… but I think as critical media *scholars* this is 1 of the best contributions, to generate new ways of seeing/feeling/understanding, open up new futures abandoned by current sociotech imaginaries…
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For a long time I’ve been writing about the environmental impacts of data centers— what can I read to better understand how that extends to LLM and AI more specifically?
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Listen to our 3-part podcast on data centers -- starting with people and politics, and ending with their environment impacts!
#datacenters
#environmentalmedia
Now on YouTube:
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"Traditional data centers are designed with five to 10 kilowatts per rack as an average density; the advent of AI now requires 60 or more kilowatts per rack."
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🚨 New: Volume 25 Issue 2, February 2023
Special Issue: Data centers and the infrastructural temporalities of digital media
Guest Editor:
Julia Velkova
Guest Editor:
Jean-Christophe Plantin
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AI has a climate problem — but so does all of tech
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I’m working on a new concept about the pain of data/pain of datafication
Do people hate this neologism?? I just made it up (as far as I know)
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“…the planetary costs of AI hype are clearest when focusing on hyperscale data centres.”
"[W]e recognise AI hype as a socio-technical narrative which is spun through a multitude of mechanisms globally and affect societies, and our planet, worldwide."
ht:
@symboliev
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"“If the river is going to be de-watered eight or nine months a year, those fish are just out of luck,” he said. “Google is in part cooling its servers with salmon and steelhead.”"
Yet another unseen environmental cost of AI compute: "Google’s data centers used 355 million gallons of The Dalles’ water last year, 29% of the city’s total water consumption."
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Data Center Studies people:
I have an outdated resource list that I thought we could update together for everyone to use:
I'll be adding refs, and please add some, including your own work!!
Share widely!
#datacenters
#datacenterstudies
#cloudstudies
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the best thing about academia is thinking together
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If folks are interested in earlier discussions of water + data infrastructure, I also discuss it here, as part of "Big data ecologies":
Thank you, journalists, for documenting AI's environmental harms, and I hope my fellow educators are listening.
I also want to thank (again)
@mel_hogan
, whose been doing this work since at least 2015, and from whom I've learned so much, starting with:
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First patient dosed in BioNTech Phase II trial of mRNA cancer vaccine
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Since everyone it tweeting about water and data centers, here's my contribution (from 2015!)
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🎙️I'm going to start recording new episodes of The Data Fix in August (I've got Leslie R. Shade and Siobhan Angus booked.. ☺️🤓) -- those new episodes released later in the month, and then new ones twice a month until the new year... so subscribe!
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Does anyone know how water is "consumed" in data centers? Is it "consumed" in the sense of being extracted/disappeared, or "consumed" as in used and then sent back out into "nature" -- and how is that purified water changed in terms of microorganisms etc?
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Overheating datacenter stopped 2.5 million bank transactions
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🙋🏼♂️ Can anyone recommend good presses (university presses etc) that encourage authors to write short books? Like, < than 120 pages/30K words?
Media studies, infrastructure, tech, enviro, focused…
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Digital Technologies for Sustainable Futures
Promises and Pitfalls
Edited ByChiara Certomà, Fabio Iapaolo, Federico Martellozzo
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Help? I’ll be teaching a new grad course called “Curating End Times” (via Film and Media) in the winter, and am wondering what you’d all suggest as readings (or podcasts, films, etc) for it? I feel like it’s missing a lot.. will share syllabus later. Rough idea:
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This reminds me of an old project (2016) where undergrad students wrote about their “old” devices — most of which they kept at home, tucked away in drawers, etc
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Alright, so I wasn't going to officially launch this until January, but I feel like Twitter is def going down soon, so....
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Do not miss this one! 👇
🎙️The Data Fix with Dr. Mél Hogan
Unsustainable, with Matthew Archer
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4. Streaming against the Environment
M Jancovic, J Keilbach - Situating Data
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Report on ChatGPT Model’s Emissions Offers Rare Glimpse of AI’s Climate Impacts
If AI is scaled up, the resulting carbon footprint could rival that of cryptocurrencies.
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We are soft launching our Genomic Media site today:
Follow us
@genomicmedia
if you're interested in DNA-based data storage from a critical humanities/media studies/archival/artistic perspective.
The team is lead by
@mel_hogan
@bestqualitycrab
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Anyone who missed the talks today — I highly recommend watching the recording:
(skip the first 30 seconds)
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I’ve been loving books that deal with
#AI
and the
#environment
in really evocative ways - through arts and humanities frameworks, especially.
Please recommend others!
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My absolute favorite thing about data/infra studies folks is that we all really like each other and support each other and try to collaborate and uplift one another!
Just wanna say that
@mel_hogan
has been writing foundational texts about the environmental impacts of data centers for a very long time. It’s not just AI!
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"Tech companies are increasingly looking to directly connect data centers to nuclear plants as they race to secure clean energy to power artificial intelligence, sparking resistance from some utilities over the potential impact on the electric grid."
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“In 2019 Microsoft announced a new partnership with ExxonMobil … The oil giant claimed that by using the technology—which relies on AI …—it could optimize mining operations and, by 2025, increase production by 50,000 oil-equivalent barrels per day.”
"To understand how
#AI
is contributing to climate change, look at the way it’s being used":
#ethics
#law
#tech
#sustainability
#business
#environment
#ESG
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I wish that academic journals didn't ask for specific citation styles until an article is accepted. What a waste of time to move dates and commas around for each attempt at getting published.
Or just have all journals have the same style.
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““There's a data center in a suburb called Altoona where they're using up to about one-fifth of the water that the city is using, and that's really significant," she said.”
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Please mark your calendars for March 28 4pm ET to listen to the presentations & engage with the work of the four grad scholars in residence at the EML.
The theme is 💥 EXTRACTIVE MEDIA 💥
Don't miss out! 100 tickets total!
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You can now preorder:
Acid Clouds: Mapping Data Centre Topologies
#datacenters
#datacenterstudies
#criticalcloudstudies
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Part 3 or our trilogy —on how weird humans are about the future (preservation) of habitable life….
@ubiquity75
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THIS THURSDAY!!
Register here:
March 28. On Zoom, starting 4pm ET.
Free, all are welcome.
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Big Tech Companies Are Obscuring AI’s Real Carbon Footprint
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The people of the cloud
Hot, strenuous and unsung. There is nothing soft and fluffy about the caretaking work that enables our digital lives
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Data centers, backbone of the digital economy, face water scarcity and climate risk.
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Here's a list with links for anyone interested (compiled from answers below):
🙋🏼♂️ Can anyone recommend good presses (university presses etc) that encourage authors to write short books? Like, < than 120 pages/30K words?
Media studies, infrastructure, tech, enviro, focused…
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"According to a preprint from the University of California, Riverside, a conversation with ChatGPT consumes around 50 cl of water, the equivalent of a small plastic bottle."
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Everyone I know who wasn't masked got covid at Congress this year.
I think conferences are dead/need to die until we clean the air etc etc etc etc.
And an opportunity to rethink a lot of things about academic community and networking... !!?
I got COVID at Congress this year (and so, it seems, did a lot of my peers). It sucks and I'm pondering what it means for me + the future of in person conferencing...
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Becky Kazansky and I have a piece coming out about this — relating pandemic data/body politic to climate and AI. Happy to share an early version for feedback in anyone is interested…
A significant amount of people on “the left” have become aggressively anti mask on par with the right wing in 2020.
It’s alarming.
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I always think of things like this when people think that "sustainability" is a leftist value and not an eventual reckoning for all...
This. Just chat prompts have the energy requirements of a small country and OpenAI has admitted that they cannot continue to operate in the long term without some kind of technological breakthrough in fusion energy.
Surprisingly generative AI is ecologically worse than crypto.
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I accompanied someone to their kid's high school graduation yesterday and I swear all the speeches -- from teachers to the valedictorian -- were at least 75% AI generated. The whole thing was trippy, a real-time imitation of a ceremony...
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today's "humans in data centers at the end of the world"
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I’m going on research leave for 6 months so I’ll be writing The Data Fix and also recording many more interviews. Trying to pace myself in all my excitement. Also trying to not reveal whose coming on the show so as to leave some mystery ☺️🎙️… but the guests are amazing!
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Anger mounts over environmental cost of Google datacentre in Uruguay
Protesters say recently approved tax-free datacentre will ‘provide nothing except toxic waste and greenhouse gases’
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““The difficulty is that when you build these data centers and pack them full of computer hardware, you’re gonna need power to run all that computer hardware,” .. it puts stress on the power grid and the increase in carbon intensity.”
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Preview of the first 6 episodes of The Data Fix podcast, recorded in a short window of time, and released slowly, so that I can catch up on the tech, fine tune the audio levels, get a better mic...
Amazing line up for eps. 7-10, too. Revealed in time (:
#thedatafix
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The choice to move a class online was never about personal anxieties/was never about individual choice. It was just the obvious thing to do in a pandemic for anyone not feeling pressure to comply to bad politics. I hope that’s clear now?
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Imaginaries on ice: Sociotechnical futures of data centre development in Norway and Iceland.
Upham, P., K. Sovacool, B., & G. Monyei, C. (2022).
Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 0(0).
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“a 2021 survey on US-based data centers revealed that 45% of data center owners … said extreme weather had threatened their continuous operations””
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Infrastructural Storytelling: A Methodological Approach for Narrating Environmental (In) justice in Technical and Professional Communication
DW Edwards, B Gelms, R Shivener - Technical Communication Quarterly, 2023
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"Now what the heck do we do about data centers?"
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Can universities bring back in-class mask mandates for the fall (esp given the new wave) (beyond AHS reccs) or are we all expected to get brain + heart damage again and again??
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Warning AI industry could use as much energy as the Netherlands
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Steven Gonzalez Monserrate
@cloudAnthro
just defended his dissertation and - WOW - world, prepare yourselves for the most delightful read on data centers++ when the book version comes out!
I'm so inspired!
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Has anyone made a link between longtermism and austerity measures by uni admin who prioritize long term growth and investments over the livelihoods of current staff etc i.e. the idea that the present is expendable for the future of profit
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Officially launching The Data Fix today!!
New episode out every 10 days.
Episode 001 with
@ubiquity75
where we discuss commercial content moderation, twitter bot politics, authenticity, legit grievances about capitalism and labour… and much more!
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Data centers and Indigenous sovereignty: Data center materialities, representation and power in Sápmi/northern Sweden
S Sargsyan - 2022
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Thank you to Francis Hunger & co for the beautiful Training the Archive book --
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If other academics are working with this format (for knowledge dissemination), I'd love to know.
It's certainly as much work as writing articles, and circulates more broadly, but doesn't quite "count" for much in the great tally of academic outputs. I'd like to change that!
Listen to our 3-part podcast on data centers -- starting with people and politics, and ending with their environment impacts!
#datacenters
#environmentalmedia
Now on YouTube:
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