This week in class, in addition to these readings, we’ll be discussing several projects that intervene in different off-the-grid situations in a range of ways. These projects can be variously categorized as art & design, information technology for international development (ICT4D), community-oriented, or DIY. Take a look at the projects listed (see “Objects and examples” below). I’ve provided links for some of them where you can find out more. We’ll make time during class on Thursday to discuss, and I hope they might offer some inspiration for your project work. We’ll talk about project expectations on Tuesday.
For your reading homework, please focus on the first two texts. I hope in class to also consider GPS and the SpaceX Starlink as technologies that enable practices of “gridding”, and if you’d like to read more about GPS, have a look at the Lisa Parks article. We’ll also be talking about One Laptop per Child (OLPC), which is discussed in the first text, and if you’d like to learn more about it, take a look at the last three optional articles.
Reading
Shane Brennan, “Visionary Infrastructure: Community Solar Streetlights in Highland Park“, Journal of Visual Culture, 2017
Lisa Parks, “Plotting the personal: Global Positioning Satellites and interactive media“, Ecumene, 2001. Somewhat dated, as this article came out when GPS was just emerging as a widely used technology. Interesting to gain that perspective however on something that we take to be ubiquitous today in smartphones and car navigation systems.
Class artifacts
Tuesday, March 8: Reading discussion. Presentation slides.
Optional texts, if you’d like to read about OLPC:
- Warschauer and Ames, “Can One Laptop per Child Save the World’s Poor?“, Journal of International Affairs, 2010
- Warschauer, Cotton, Ames: “One Laptop per Child Birmingham: Case Study of a Radical Experiment“, International Journal of Learning and Media, 2012
- Philip, Irani, and Dourish, “Postcolonial Computing: A Tactical Survey“, Science, Technology & Human Values, 2012
Objects and examples
- One Laptop per Child (OLPC) – Described in the readings
- The Mesh Potato project, Elektra Aichele and Village Telco, (FAQ)
- Wireless Networking in the Developing World (Book)
- goTenna and Beartooth
- Eyebeam’s 2014 exhibit “Off-the-Grid” – a collection of projects related to off-grid investigation
- Microgrids, Internet of Things
- GPS, letterboxing, geocaching
- SpaceX’s Starlink. Here are some additional articles about this project. You can probably access the full text of these through our library website. If you are curious and want help finding them, let me know.
- McDowell, “The Low Earth Orbit Satellite Population and Impacts of the SpaceX Starlink Constellation“
- IEEE, “SpaceX’s space-Internet woes“
- Alexandra Witze, “SpaceX launch highlights threat to astronomy from ‘megaconstellations’“, Nature, 2019