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[casparmenkman]

anticipatory consumption

So I have recently handed in my thesis. And typically a day after I handed it in I figured out why I am not happy with what I wrote. Its not so much the pragmatic approach that I took, but the fact that I lost the perspective that actually pushed me towards my theme. The making automatic of markets and their imposition on lived spaces is something I think is interesting, and in my theme (the transition to smart grids) this makes for something of a paradigm shift in the generation/distribution/consumption of electricity. I touched on it, saying that the administration level (in terms of government and regulatory oversight) of the electricity industry can not keep up with the technological change they are engendering, but I did not push through and now I regret that.

There are two major (technological) drivers behind the transition to smart grids. Firstly there is the fact that energy will be generated distributed over the network, secondly there is the fact that most of this generation happens intermittently.  New technologies are needed to integrate these new patterns of generation. This is a less linear path in volumes, times and velocity of power production and therefor needs to be mediated to align with the customer's desired uses. Think about it:  if we all decided to plug in our electric vehicle at the same time and there is no power to charge them available,  the network invariably fails.

A network that would allow bi-directional information exchange is one way to solve this. It is based on a new decentralised structure in which intermediaries through the market regulate power consumption of the households connected to them. They do so by offering electricity to their localised (virtually or geographically, both variants exist) markets and through a bidding process they resolve the amount of forecasted energy available with the scheduled tasks of the customers. By using the micro-economic practices of demand and supply, for each of the participants an optimum is found. Needless to say this system only works with appliances that dispose over flexibility or the ability to shift, shed, store, and curtail loads at demand.

These intermediaries (referred to as aggregators) are somewhere between power brokers and market makers if we conceive of them in terms of the financial market. At each moment in the bidding process they are able to automatically re-align their calls and puts with the forecasted energy consumed and generated by their constituency. Beyond having a connection to their localised market they are also connected to the wholesale market, through which they continuously seek to create a balance between demand and supply in their power portfolio (which could also be in the form of energy futures, but lets leave that for some other time).

What is interesting to me, and what I see as a missed opportunity, is the fact that these portfolio's thrive on expectations of power supply in the network. This means that aggregators calculate the potential of generators in their network through weather forecasts and put out prices that align with the future availability of energy and its demand. This also means that (assuming those generators are connected to smart grids) whenever a surplus of energy would come available the produced would be incentivised to switch of some of their capability. And the same goes for demand, whenever the forecasts paint a picture of sparse energy, customers will be automatically incentivised to hold of on using flexible appliances. So what the smart grid is doing is creating a future through metrics that is almost inevitable when planned for.

[casparmenkman]

Ernst Junger - Glass Bees

I had always believed that Zapparoni’s monopolies rested upn the skillful exploitation of inventors - but one look was sufficient to see there was more at work in hum than a mercurial intelligence which derives profit from Plutonian zones. Jupiter, Uranus, and Nepture were in powerful conjunction. It was probably more true that this little old man knew how to invent the inventors - that he found them whenever his mosaic required. This little excerpt from the Glass Bees by Ernst Junger is typical for the foresight he shows throughout his 1957 book. (or maybe the eternallness of specfic practice?) It is as Kevin Slavin shows that the algorithms used for High Frequency Trading are not designed by the companies involved, but redeveloped without their owners ever knowing. It just shows you life is a bit like one of those square peg, round hole problems. We just need to find the fit for our ideas and only then they will find their value.

[casparmenkman]

How easy is easy enough? Narratives of the smart home and the technologies that go with it all emphasise they want to improve our lives. Through automation, extension or other auxiliary processes they and the artefacts scattered through our living rooms will make our lives easier and more pleasant.

But where are we going with this. Sure it will be nice to do some less vacuum cleaning or have the temperature switch to our preferred level when we get home, but is there an endgame to this or do we just outsource quality after quality. And if so what for?

I read this Wired article that discussed new ways of developing smart appliances in the house. Instead of making them more complicated (outfitting them with apps that we can switch on and off and need some user control), Colin Angle the CEO of IRobot argued for more automatism in the house. 

Are we that uncomfortable in the house and is this blackboxing of the prosaic really necessary. I can only talk about personal experience and while the cleaning the house is not my favourite choir, i still have plenty time to do so. 

This reminds me of something I wrote for a school project earlier this semester, where I was discussing the personal data economy and its effects on people. I argued there that we are slowly becoming an input for bigger machines around us. Focussing on specialisation instead of casting our nets wider. We are becoming like objects to machines. 

And I think here lies a friction with the intent of humankind. We are constantly trying to show that we are different from robots, superior. Every time we are over taken by a machine or AI we argue that we are better at something else and that everything is fine. We move the boundary.

But if anything has been proven over the last 20 years it is that specialised tasks are the area of robots and AI. If our best chess player can be beat by a computer should we then not learn that we as humans at this historic moment can design an entity that is better at specialised jobs than us? Why don’t we cast our net wider?

If we want to be so different, why do we not look back and see what is something of a driving force behind our being. (Bildung?) I’d argue that human skill lies in its polyvalence. Something that as of yet, and I am sure it will happen at some point, has not been replicated in machines. Yes robots are all knowing (Watson), better vacuumcleaners (Rumba), they are stronger (Cranes) or more deadly (Predator), but they are not all of that at the same time.

So I ask what are we doing when we are outsourcing all our small choirs and making our lives specialised into one element. In a way we are replicating the life of being a robot and that is something we are definitely not better at. 

Also I hate the term anthropocene and I hope we will quickly come up with another imaginary time that is called robocene. Not because it sounds better, it is equally absurd, but because people keep using it in a way that is so serious and often non-reflexive and that irks me. 

[casparmenkman]

I am wondering what the move from global players in technology, to offer up platforms that are specifically designed for the user to tailor their uses, means. Microsoft for instance is emphatically engaging with the market for so called ‘makers’.

At one hand it is logical. There needs to be a learning curve for people to actually be engaged by it. If we use hardware and software that is simple (Arduino/Raspberry), but still quite technical, then people will be hard pressed to start thinking or building themselves. Whereas more recognisable platforms offer encouragement. 

But at the same time, not knowing what Microsoft exactly is offering with Windows IoT, it is difficult for me to see beyond this stifling ‘innovation’. In my mind ready made applications that offer to ‘make’ are like boxes of building blocks. 

Sure there is the possibility of doing something new, but it is mostly offering up a toolbox that is controlled (proprietary) that provides once again controlled framework. Most people are only going to work the blocks. A language that makes it hard to step outside of the offered frame of reference. 

This sounds really cynical, but I am trying to get my head around the way the market is changing and if it really is. Does this kind of technology not just attenuate individual differences into isomorphic signals? Probably need to read some more on this. 

[casparmenkman]

On Friday, 11,500 people paid $10 each to watch two men in pants stand on some scales.

[casparmenkman]

I like making maps. Its fun and I think I am getting the hang of it. But most of the time the data I use is not mine, its not like I would really want to get my own data. Its just that I use the census or other institutions information and map this on an already existing map. this information however stastically correct of course does have a few problems.

While reading  I was thinking if there is something like an inclusive mapping domain. I know you have open street map that allows for people to make their own maps, but is there a study or field that deals with the stastistical information from different perspectives.

the map here is super selective. Its the ‘average daily commute to and from Edinburgh. I dont know how they got their data and I dont know if its anywhere close and if they counted everyone. Probably maps from different epistemological positions would look a lot less sharp, but I would like to see them.

[casparmenkman]

Just a quick writeup

I do like myself a good metaphor. Especially because they often relay a lot about the epistemological position a writer takes. In a field where the object of study is something intangible and immaterial we have to resort to metaphors in our descriptions. So it is when defining infrastructure, in an attempt to stay as objective as possible, we look to the past for our explanations as their metaphors are so innocuous we internalized them (as we do with all infrastructure that works 'desirably', oh the irony!)

Mattelart for instance refers to enlightenment thinking and the birth of the commons where infrastructure was about facilitating a world of free circulation of goods, ideas and knowledges. More recent theory formulate infrastructure in terms of biopolitics is already more promising, but for me still requires more recognition of the network its agentic quality. What these strands of thought have in common is that they conflate the dispersed contents and its infrastructure and in doing so reduce it to one object. And I think that describing infrastructure as a mere facilitator feels like a reduction that is unnecessary. Especially when we look at it as an interconnected system.

The tale of India's hydraulic infrastructure system, that through social relations extends above the ground and still undergirds the daily lives of the citizenry, can help our understanding of the two way street infrastructure has become. Man and machine have become two sides of the same coin, but not in the traditional way, where one extends the other.

Outside of being a condition for modern life infrastructure and its above ground reinforcing have become part of mans rituals and we have become part of it. Infrastructure, then, in this case is not restricted to its physical manifestation in terms of pipes, lines and other tools of dispersal but includes the imaginaries and the immaterial such as (situated) knowledges.

Here it is easy to claim that man is in fact an extension of the infrastructure, but this would also be an oversimplification. Modern citizenry is unquestionably intertwined with systems of distribution (be they knowledge, utilities or socialites), but I would argue we are produced and we produce at the same time. I think we should look towards infrastructure as something that constitutes us as much as we (in the broadest sense) have shape and together we move like a spiral, away from any unitary norm.

[casparmenkman]

infra and opacity

If infrastructure refers to the facilities and systems that serve the hinterlands then would it be fair it includes all the services, facilities, materials and knowledges involved in getting these systems to connect to the ground. If so it would be interesting to see if there is anything that we consider not to be infrastructure.

Infrastructure through this lens, almost, makes it an objectivity. Asserting this, makes it quite the opposite. Take for instance this question: Is our belief infrastructure? It is a certain pool of knowledge that facilitates, structures and forms our way of getting around in the world. It is treated as a fact and its rituals and materials as artifacts embodying something that is vital in their lives. If this is the case can we describe infrastructure as something objective something at hand?

Surely not. Even if we take more recognizable definitions of infrastructure such as the roads, water and electricity networks. But are they so different, they seem to have the same dematerializing function, the creating of facts and artifacts in our lives by structuring it. If these facilities and systems that serve us are to be understood as infrastructure would not our buildings, our money and everything underneath be infrastructure? And by saying this would not infrastructure be something questionable?

I am not trying to get at a general normative valuation of infrastructure. Some will be good, some will be bad. That is life. But the fact that we shrouded much of it, is inherently problematic, because even though we live through times in which emancipation, equality and all that stuff is something everyone seems to value, at least in the areas where I live, the infrastructures are filled up with historicity.

There are no definite answers here, but the question we need to ask ourselves is, do we want to trade-off control, equality and agency for comfort. Or otherwise: the more complex the services and facilities are that we depend on, the more opaque they become and the more natural they feel (channeling Bolter and Grusin) It is ok, until it is not. Like all things.

[casparmenkman]

De Vaucanson’s canard. 

[casparmenkman]

Just a bit of a Rant

I am reading on autonomous multi-agent systems and distributed artificial intelligence in the hope that someday I will come to grasp their implications more thoroughly, but as a human I can not help but antropormorphize the hell out of these software programs. Basically humans are building a new energy network, or better energy networks, that requires some very advanced self-regulating, repairing and governing capabilities. We need these networks because the old ones just wont do, we are heading fast towards peak oil and therefor we need new fuel, you know for our machines.

To make matters worse we are not just in the process of replacing our current electrical needs, but we are also trying to address the predicted increase in consumption. (which is estimated at about 76% by 2030) We need a system that is interoperable with what we currently have lying about (we can not change the networks from one day to the next), and which is also portable towards the future we desire: that is consumption. Your typical production and reproduction clusterfuck.

Systems that would be able to deal with our desires are terrifically complicated, not just because of the high demand but also because in this future of endless consumption we are going to rely on renewables. Renewables is energy that does not tap into the resources that have been building up in our earths crust for millennia: basically sun, wind and water. But the wind and the sun have the habit of not being there when we want them. (which in the case of power generation is always) Which unfortunately means that power generation is something that can not be guaranteed stable.

This is where the complicated stuff comes in (well to be honest there is more complicated stuff there with the interoperability between different types of power and microgrids and weird energy markets that I do not completely understand) But basically because we can not guarantee a stable supply we need to address our societal demand for power, regulate it if you will. One of the adaptations and probably the most recognizable in the whole state of affairs will be this little box you might already have at home: advanced metering infrastructure, or a smart meter. This little meter could dynamically price power and bring the market to your home (again production, reproduction / or production through the algorithm)

Anyway the thing I like and what fascinates me is the fact how these DAI's or Multi-Agent Systems are described almost like they are people. They are described as both always in competition amongst each other in regulation and managing, but also often times as collaborators: helping each other out and trying to achieve goals they could not 'single-handedly' achieve. They have a certain individuality – at an agent level – but also function on a group level as a society through norms (could we say they, through learning create a culture? I dont know)

And here is where I kind of when of the tracks with my imagination. Because we are never going to understand algorithms completely, like they wont completely understand us. We function differently , through different codes and on different planes. But we are  in the process of becoming even more co-dependent on them, like they are indebted to us for their creation. To different societies that live past each other, but depend on eachother for inputs, mostly blissfully unaware. And then I thought of Palahniuk and his book Rant where in a dystopian future there are two groups of people the respectable Daytimers and the oppressed Nighttimers. And I wondered who we are.

[casparmenkman]

I am Dutch and I ride my bike a lot. I like it and I will probably always will. Not only because I dont have a drivings license, thats sort of an uncomfortable lazyness that have slipped into my life, which I am ok with. I might never put in the hours to drive a car.

I ride my bike in Edinburgh, the place where I live and what I have come to consider is the difference in people approaching bikes. Or maybe it is just the way that the Dutch differentiate between vehicles in traffic and people do not in Scotland. 

Its another materialization of the fact that rules are made up. When I ride my bike and a pedestrian crosses in front of me, I swerve and go around them. This is not normal here, you are supposed to wait. Like when a car would serve, even from complete standstill, it would look weird and worrying. This is how people, I think, consider bikes here. As road transport, following the rules of road transport.

Not a completely new thought. I know. But a nice one all together. I think.

[casparmenkman]

So I am writing on an installation that we are building that considers the role of personal data as a bartering tool and sitting here reading and writing about this makes me so cynical. So this happened, finger slipping. Also shout out to my homeboy Adam Smith!

[casparmenkman]

Its about infrastructure and its relation to the citizen in general and about energy and its practices of materialization and dematerialization through algorithmic governance in particular.

[casparmenkman]

The first step is to measure what can easily be measured. This is okay as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which cannot be measured, or give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what cannot be measured is not very important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what cannot be measured does not really exist. This is suicide.” —Daniel Yankelovich (from Enough!, by Jack Bogle)

[casparmenkman]

The voice of habit

Ironically anthropomorphizing nonhuman agents would mean a less anthropocentric and maybe a more sensitive environment. Finishing Jane Bennett, vibrant materialism.

[casparmenkman]

I am reading on methods of de-territorialization and re-territorialization. And got to think of unconventional ways of dealing with space. Paul Virilio and Claude Parent introduced the concept of the oblique as a way of dealing with space which focusses on movement and its qualities. The oblique (a sloping surface) has the potentiality to make any part of a structure habitable.

This reminded of those crazy goats who live on mountain sides that are too steep for people. These mountainsides are then in effect sort of reserves for these mountain goats on which they live alone, undisturbed by other creatures.

So is there a human equivalent to this? One could argue that our cities are the natural home for humans that sees no other species interfere. But besides being too straightforward, this idea is just not right. Our cities are in fact ecosystems that we share with many other organisms and animals. Take for instance the birds who inhabit the trees, the parks and gutters of our homes.

No, the only human reserve that came to mind in this brief train of thought was the Walking City as described by Archigrams Ron Herron. These robotic 'creatures' are distinctly contra-utopian in the anthropocentric sense, conceptualised alongside ideas such as the superarchitectures by Archizoom (the no-stop city) and Superstudio (continuos monument) in the 1960s. Vast moving structures that detach man from the earth specific territories. Creating human reserves.

[casparmenkman]

Best thing about the changing nature of politics and society I have read in a long time. It's about America and the decline of a real political left and yet it so easy to translate to the current Dutch situation. Its a long read, but well worth it. An equal longer-term danger, however, is the likelihood that we will find ourselves with no critical politics other than a desiccated leftism capable only of counting, parsing, hand-wringing, administering, and making up “Just So” stories about dispossession and exploitation recast in the evocative but politically sterile language of disparity and diversity. This is neoliberalism’s version of a left. Radicalism now means only a very strong commitment to antidiscrimination, a point from which Democratic liberalism has not retreated. Rather, it’s the path Democrats have taken in retreating from a commitment to economic justice.