[Environment-readinggroup] Invitation to our Data Centre Reading Group

[Julian Pütz]

Dear Environment Reading Group,

here is the promised invitation for the monthly reading circle about 
collectivizing data centres, that I told you about last session. I think 
it neatly picks up on some questions regarding visibility/access and 
power in the context of data centres and their operators, that came up 
last Wednesday. If you could not make it to the last session, here is a 
short intro:

"Based on discussions about the negative impacts of data centres in our 
research group at the Weizenbaum Institute, we asked ourselves: What if 
data centres were owned and/or governed by the people who live in their 
direct vicinity? Would this change some of the negative impacts we often 
observe in the data centre industry? How would citizens co-own and 
govern a data centre? What will citizens learn through the experience of 
operating a data centre?

We decided to explore this idea in the form of a reading circle."

So far, we have read these two texts:

Marinos, Alexandros, und Gerard Briscoe. „Community Cloud Computing“. In 
Cloud Computing, herausgegeben von Martin Gilje Jaatun, Gansen Zhao, und 
Chunming Rong, 472–84. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2009. 
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10665-1_43.

Monserrate, Steven Gonzalez. „Thermotemporalities, Thermomasculinities: 
Uptime, Downtime, and Server Heat in the Digital Anthropocene“. New 
Media & Society 25, Nr. 2 (February 2023): 324–44. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221149938.

If you are interested, feel free to join us for our next session next 
Wednesday from 12:00-13:00 CET. See below for this sessions reading and 
some questions for discussion. We'll meet here: 
https://collocall.weizenbaum-institut.de/b/rai-81e-rgb-wml

Best,
Julian

-------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht --------
Betreff: 	3rd Data Center Reading Group
Datum: 	Thu, 27 Feb 2025 23:07:22 +0100


Dear all,

Apologies for announcing this one later than the others, but I’m really 
excited for our upcoming reading group on *Wednesday March 5th 12 - 
13:00h CET. *I’ll send out a calendar invite just now.

For this session we will be discussing*Srnicek, N. (2022). Data, 
Compute, Labour. In M. Graham, & F. Ferrari (Eds.), Digital Work in the 
Planetary Market (pp. 241-261). The MIT Press. 
<https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/173367437/2022_Data_Compute_Labour_final_.pdf> 
*Although this article does not exclusively focus on data centres, I 
thought it might be a good starting point for us to discuss key 
arguments as to /why /we’d like to propose community owned data centres, 
especially keeping in mind recent announcements 
<https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ac_25_481> on 
public EU investments in AI.

As such, key questions I think could be useful to discuss are:

  1. Do we agree with the general argument presented by Srnicek? Why? Why
     not? What would we add?
  2. Would community owned data centres be impactful in limiting/
     resisting the monopolisation of AI? Why? Why not?
  3. Based on this chapter, as well as prior readings on data centres and
     the environment and labor conditions (+ your own field of
     expertise); what are the core arguments justifying why we need
     community owned data centres?
  4. What other policies might be useful to mitigate the trends driving
     AI monopolisation described in the chapter? Do they complement
     community owned data centres or compete with them?

Unfortunately, Morshed will not be able to join the session. However, he 
has volunteered to lead the next one on legal structures for community 
owned data centres in April.

Let me know if you have any questions, points you’d like to discuss or 
people you think we should invite.

Happy reading!

Tara


-- 
Julian Pütz (he/him)
Student Assistant

Digitalization, Sustainability, and Participation

Weizenbaum-Institut e. V.
Hardenbergstraße 32 \\ 10623 Berlin \\ Germany

📧 julian.puetz at weizenbaum-institut.de
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