I am living with nodes. I just have to pull back, because I am limited. Because I have nodes.

First off, I freaking hated this reading. It was extremely complicated for someone with only a surface level understanding of the computational language used. As well as that, Franklin has a habit of writing extremely long sentences and over-explaining a lot of what is said, although never actually breaking down any of his concepts in the interest of accessibility. The reader envisioned here already has a complex understanding of how Cloud technology works, which feels redundant. The most helpful part of the article, to me, was the beginning where Aristophanes' play The Clouds is used to illustrate where the concept of the Cloud in computation originates. I'm aware this may be Art student bias at work.

One [small] section of this article that I did find interesting and actually did make some semblance of sense was the section on "nodes." (p.458) Franklin makes the claim that the Cloud being completely removed from how we understand the Internet is impossible. The base idea being refuted is that the Cloud aims to uncouple connectivity from node infrastructure in order to create a completely free and limitless digital space. Nodes referring to points of communication, such as PC's or phones. The suggestion is that the Internet as we know it is still a tangible network because it needs these nodes to be in operation, as these points of communication are what allow for the Internet to interact with users and thus serve it's assumed purpose.

The belief that the Cloud embodies ubiquity in a way that would mean we do not need these points of communication, in an elimination of hardware, is false- as explained here by Franklin:

"Where the web-type network assures the possibility of measurement and representation by counting nodes and edges, then, the cloud eliminates the representation but not the existence of these constitutive units." (p. 458)

True, the Cloud presents as a type of autonomous digital organism, whereas the Internet presents as an ecosystem of many such digital organisms, it's still a thing that is ultimately routed in the physical, as without any physical space to exist from or being interacted with, it fails to be. The Cloud is an always will be a digital thing which means it draws its life from computers, which, at the end of the day, are physical things. The evolution of computers is at this stage impossible to really envision a limit to, but I feel it is safe to say that neither them, not any digital information network, will ever exist without some physical link.

Self-tracking as Small Hurdle for Big Data

Tamar Sharon and Dorien Zandbergen present an interesting enough discussion regarding the general pro's and con's of data and it's power. Starting by addressing the fact that there is in fact contention regarding Big Data and the society formed as a result, the following article focuses on a central component of data society with the notion of "tracking."

Tracking, in this sense, is essentially the point of data in contemporary society. As Sharon and Zandbergen state, data in our world has "its value framed in terms of political power, insofar as it enhances various forms of government surveillance, and in terms of monetary resource, as it benefits corporate profit." (p.1696). Tracking is this application of data collected to visualise the movements and potential use of groups of people.

Getting into the different ways that people are tracked, we are introduced to case studies wherein people found creating their own means of tracking themselves, generating individual data theoretically separate from that Big Data that is logged, was a "liberating" experience. This may seem like a resistance against data-driven society is being formed, but it isn't. This is more like a reverse-psychological phenomenon; not wanting to be part of the big data pool by creating your own data is still generation of data and, method dependant, this information can still be used and manipulated. 

These self-tracking people believe that they are outside the influence of Big Data via their practices. However, I would argue a paradox in that the meaning associated with data is its ability to track the 'movements' of people. Self-tracking achieves the same goal of Big Data, just in a different way. An argument can be made for the inaccessibility of that individual data because it is generated away from the same grid, but as surveillance increases this data is likely to end up in the same pool.

The Arts Degree Problem

It is difficult to look at The future isn't working, the chapter from Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, and not find yourself considering the problems with what they're talking about without falling into a narrow "the problems with Marxism in general" mindset.

Partly due to this disclaimer, among other reasons such as not having done enough research to appropriately back my responses, in looking at this reading I actively avoided coming up to a response to the whole article. If I was to try, the piece is at least interesting, and they are obviously passionate about what they are saying. They are definitely optimistic which is nice in the arts world, and they are right about the title statement.

What I am comfortable talking about was an issue that comes up around page 90-91; something I will call the Arts Degree Problem. The writers are breaking down the "composition of the surplus population" they claim there are four different strata.

1. the capitalist segment: the unemployed and underemployed within typical capitalist circumstance.
2. the non-capitalist segment: the same segment minus any social safety net, people who cannot afford to be without work for long because of this.
3. the latent segment: qualified working people who might suddenly become not that through social development.
4. the inactive segment: disabled people, prisoners, students, etc.

Looking specifically at that third segment, Srnicek and Williams explain that:

"a third latent group exists primarily in pre-capitalist economic formations that can be readily mobilised into the capitalist labour market. This includes the reservoir of proto-proletarians, but this group also includes unwaged domestic labourers, as well as salaried professionals who are under threat of being returned to the proletariat, often through deskilling."

That last bit, the salaried professionals, that's us. The people who hold jobs that are produced by art degrees are the first thing to become obsolete with economic evolution. Less and less companies need sociological thinkers while the increase in demand for technically specified people is intense. This is an indirect result of automation, as discussed in the article, in that menial tasks are automated, with the automation itself creating a demand for technicians, and in the middle is a no-mans land of people whose education focused on thought and creativity, rather than technical and practical application, that are simply not relevant in a world based on linear practicality.

This is why people with engineering degrees give us a hard time, they saw that we basically got degrees in something fun, rather than something useful, based on that future we're going into that isn't working. To me, this means I need to look at adapting what I've learnt from arts to work as something I probably never thought I would.