Cloud Computing in the Kampung
VII. MORE LESSONS FROM AIRKAMI TOWARD GLOBAL COMPUTING FOR THE COMMONS
In addition to the empirical results produced by the Airkami experiment we offer in the subsequent paragraphs a set of morespeculative observations.
Airkami brings to the foreground unresolved assumptions aboutthe utility of sharing data in general. Personal data generated by social media have been at the forefront of the data culture discussionin the recent past [12]. The kind of data Airkami produces is delicate for entirely different reasons. While we are not collecting sensitive social data in the sense of bank accounts or government identification numbers, we are recording
potentially sensitive communal data. Environmental data
is a new kind of communal mirror that depicts hidden relationships and dependencies. While the measurements show water well contamination, the correlation with weather data makes deep-seated water management and human waste disposal infrastructure deficiencies visible. Not everyone is comfortable with such disclosures. Bad water wells can decrease the value of a house so homeowners might not want their water well results
made public, in a similar manner as some cities, on a much larger scale, do not want to have their air pollution values made public [30]. Interests collide in unusual ways where new data brings old secrets to light. Contamination knows no national boundaries. Waste produced by private entities and ill-managed by communal organizations and public institutions, accumulates to a threat to the commons. Data production has apotential to act on this linked chain, provided it is shared. But even experimental data sharing mechanisms in place are largely inadequate to deal with the demands of environmental problems.
Consider the case of FreeNet [31]. This system allows anonymous data sharing and the distributed storage of potentially censored pollutiondata, but it is hampered by its preferential positioning of popular materials. The approach ofallowing ‘unpopular’ files to be deleted to ‘make way for more popular content’ [32] stems from a
focus on ‘frivolous’ personal music or video data; hardly the kind of thoughtful policyrequired for a future global database of resource contamination.
The dependenciesbetween the care of the commons and the knowledge economy continue to be intensely debated amongst social scientists [33]. But experimental approaches that take onthe problem in the field remain
rare. Despite Airkami’s deficiencies, our approach demonstrates the potential of straddling the divide between the private and public realm for the oversight of common goods through a hybrid data handling approach. By placing a front line data center at the source of data creation, we give the makers and caretakers of the data at
the local level ultimate control and responsibility over their own data production. By linking selectively to the global cloud, access can be gained to opportunities that would otherwise not be available. This model has clear
advantages for emerging economies that can offload high end computing infrastructure, but it could also be usefully appliedin mature economies for the advantage
of robustdata control on the local level. The underlying philosophy is to keep essentials ‘at home’ in small, cheap, local nodes and move data deemed sharable selectively to the cloud. One could imagine‘interesting’ legal push-pull dynamics from a distributed hybrid approach, with stricter environmental protection laws
(from the country of data origin or the country of data
Distributed infrastructure initiatives are gaining attention in other areas of computing. Block-chaining [34] is moving from exclusively financial contexts to resource management in general, where costs create barriers to entry. While still largely a software project, Ethereum [35], 'a platform for decentralized applications', is at least showing a new degree of ambition in using distributed software running on dispersed hardware to manage trust systems in general.
Independent of data distribution mechanism, the economics of computing remain decisive. Certainly a hybrid system that must maintain multiple data repositories and manage the interactions between them would be more costly than a single located approach. One way to address that barrier is to reframe the question. One might ask: Why is data free? Why would an emerging economy that 'shares' its environmental data not receive some form or remuneration for that data? This line of thought is similar to that expressed in Nelson's Xanadu project [36] and recently expanded by Lanier [37]. The Lanier version foresees a two-way information flow, linking sources of information to the places and processes it flows to, thus enabling data producers to be reimbursed (in the form of micropayments) for the data they generate. Might one not apply the principle to monitoring of environmental conditions across the globe? While a bi-directional exchange would create a technology for such transactions, it would not generate a societal impetus to deploy the strategy. Recent experiments in ‘monitorial citizenship' are interesting in this regard. The term was coined in the context of Promise Tracker, a project that allows people to track politicians' political promises over time [38]. Could such an approach be carried over to the monitoring of environmental conditions where the value of data flows could be associated with the significance of the shared problems they describe?
The fact that almost any environmental quality indicator can be collected in real time, stored at low cost, and shared with others, does not automatically put it to ‘good use’. From the perspective of urban design the particularities of ‘good use’ remain contested. While cloud enabled systems show high levels of adaptability and have been able to enact the kind of smartness that forecasts and manages urban traffic flows, designing an ‘inviting’ [39] urban place remains elusive. Interactive media do not necessarily generate urban participation. Only recently have urban data designers started to address this problem systematically by surveying city inhabitants for their opinions on various urban participation technologies [40] in order to develop design criteria for effective and meaningful participation in urban activities. But just as each city has its own flavor, data enabled participation will likely differ from city to city in the future.
What we have learned from the Airkami experiment is that the frictions experienced in cloud computing in the kampung are largely a result of the growing pains of an emerging economy. However, these frictions are also an opportunity to question the usefulness of the global cloud and consider alternatives to cloud monopolies. Despite a need for a globally coordinated informatics for the care of the commons, the global cloud will likely remain firmly in the hands of private actors in the near future. Despite (and because of) the high performance these computing services offer, they should be held in check, for example with new dependencies on the data sources they rely on. While a technology-only approach to the care of the commons will remain inadequate, ignoring the new potentials of the cloud will render efforts to manage global environmental data less effective.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was supported in part by grants from Amazon AWS education and Intel Research Labs. Special thanks to Derek Curry for insightful comments.
REFERENCES
[1] A. Mackenzie. Realizing the promise of biotechnology: Infrastructural-icons in synthetic biology, Futures, Volume 48, April 2013, pp. 5-12, 2013.
[2] Hodgkinson S. Is Your City Smart Enough? Ovum. 2001. http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/Is_your_city_smart_en ough-Ovum_Analyst_Insights.pdf
[3] W. Venters, E. Whitle. A critical review of cloud computing: researching desires and realities. Journal of Information Technology, 27, pp. 179–197. 2012.
[4] S. Rosenbush. The Snowden Effect on Cloud is Real, Hightail CEO says. IN: Wall Street Journal, Sept 19, 2013.
http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/09/18/the-snowden-effect-on- cloud-is-real-hightail-ceo-says/
[5] Opencompute: http://www.opencompute.org/
[6] Y. Sverdlik. Wall Street Rethinking Data Center Hardware. IN: Datacenter Knowledge. March 11, 2014.
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2015/03/11/open -compute-wall-street-rethinking-data-center-hardware/ [7] Amazon AWS: http://aws.amazon.com/?nc2=h_ls [8] B. Kepes. Scale Beyond Comprehension – Some AWS
Numbers, Forbes Magazine, 11/25/2014
[9] T. Morgan. A rare peek into the massive scale of AWS. In: Enterprisetech, Systems Edition, November14, 2014. http://www.enterprisetech.com/2014/11/14/rare-peek-massive- scale-aws/
[10] J. Hamilton. AWS Innovation at Scale. Conference Presentation re:Invent 2014, Las Vegas, NV, 2014.
http://mvdirona.com/jrh/talksandpapers/JamesHamiltonReInvent 2014.pdf
[11] M. Dekker. Critical Cloud Computing. European Network and Information Security Agency, 2012.
[12] European Commission. Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe. Brussels, 2012.
[13] S. Goyal. Public vs Private vs Hybrid vs Community – Cloud Computing: A Critical Review. I.J. Computer Network and Information Security, 3, pp. 20-29, 2014.
[14] H. Steier. Microsoft Schweiz beugt sich Druck der Datenschützer. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 19 March, 2014.
http://www.nzz.ch/digital/microsoft-privatim-datenschutz-cloud- 1.18266124
[15] Equinix: http://www.equinix.com/locations/indonesia- colocation/jakarta-data-center/
[16] DLA Piper Data Protection Laws of the World Handbook, 2015. www.dlapiperdataprotection.com/#handbook/
[17] L. Irani, J. Vertesi, P. Dourish, K. Philip, R. Grinter. Postcolonial computing: a lens on design and development. ACM, pp. 1311-1320. 2010.
[18] M. Böhlen, I. Maharika, Y. Ziyan, I. Hakim. Biosensing in the Kampung, Intelligent Environments (IE), 2014.
[19] Tecta: http://technomaps.veoliawatertechnologies.com/tecta/en/ [20] Davisnet: http://www.davisnet.com/product_documents/weather/spec_she ets/6152_62_53_63_SS.pdf [21] Xubuntu: http://xubuntu.org/about/ [22] Weewx: http://www.weewx.com/ [23] Postgresql: http://www.postgresql.org/ [24] Postfix: https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/serverguide/postfix.html [25] 25 water results: 54.235.133.52/hasil_air_25.php
[26] 25 weather readings: 54.235.133.52/hasil_cuaca_25.php [27] World Health Organization. Guidelines for drinking-water
quality: incorporating first addendum. Vol. 1, Recommendations. – 3rd edition. 2006.
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/gdwq0506.pdf [28] R. Heeks. EGovernment for Development: Success/Failure
Rates Survey Overview, 2003.
http://www.egov4dev.org/success/sfrates.shtml [29] D. Dada, “The Failure of E-Government in Developing
Countries: A Literature Review,” The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 2006.
http://www.ejisdc.org/ojs2/index.php/ejisdc/article/view/277/176 [30] T. Stoerk. Statistical corruption in Beijing's air quality data has
likely ended in 2012. Working paper 194, London School of Economics and Political Science. May, 2015.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/wp-
content/uploads/2015/05/Working-Paper-194-Stoerk.pdf [31] I. Clarke, O. Sandberg, B. Wiley, and T. Hong. Freenet: a
distributed anonymous information storage and retrieval system. In International workshop on Designing privacy enhancing technologies: design issues in anonymity and unobservability, Hannes Federrath (Ed.). Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., New York, NY, USA, 46-66. 2001.
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=371977 [32] Freenet: https://freenetproject.org/whatis.html
[33] C. Vercellone et al. Managing the commons in the knowledge economy. FP7 - CAPS Project no. 610349. Decentralised Citizens ENgagement Technologies (D-CENT). 2015.
www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/d-
cent_managing_the_commons_in_the_knowledge_economy.pdf [34] J. Brito and A. Castillo. Bitcoin: A Primer for Policymakers.
Mercatus Center. George Mason University. 2013.
http://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/Brito_BitcoinPrimer.pdf [35] V. Buterin. Ethereum: A Next-Generation Cryptocurrency and
Decentralized Application Platform. Bitcoin Magazine, January 23, 2014. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/9671/ethereum-next- generation-cryptocurrency-decentralized-application-platform [36] Xanadu: http://xanadu.com/
[37] J. Lanier. Who Owns the Future? Simon and Schuster, 2013. [38] Monitorial citizenship: https://civic.mit.edu/category/blog-
tags/monitorial-citizenship
[39] K. Nowicka, Smart City logistics on cloud computing model. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 151, 266-281. 2014. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.10.025
[40] F. Salim, U. Haque. Urban computing in the wild: A survey on large scale participation and citizen engagement with ubiquitous computing, cyber physical Systems, and internet of Things. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 81, 31-48. 2015. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2015.03.003