I am the Datascape

I am a brick. I live on the streets. I am just a couple of centimeters thick, monolithic. No wires in me, no screen, no wifi. I seem to be a fully analog object. Nonetheless, somewhere out there, in a world i cannot see, exists a copy of me. A much more interesting version of myself you could argue: attached to it, an endless amount of information, thousands of photos showing how I look in winter, in summer, in the morning, in the evening. Information obout the people I have carried on my back, tourists and locals, swapfiets blue and swapfiets red. Just because I happen to have been layed onto a bridge that people like to take pictures on, my digital twin is a huge collection of data about me, a small analog brick in Amsterdam.

I am a printer. I do my work standing still. I keep track of the amounts of ink, the sheets of paper. Often, I trouble people. When I do, I let the network know that I’d been bad, so all my other printer friends can avoid making the same mistake. I remember your files and make sure you pay the right amount. Imagine an important week, and I forget everything I know. Don’t know which file is whose, which color to mix where. I look like I do my work standing still, but I am only useful because I travel through the network around me.

I am water. I am important to people. Without me, they can’t make coffee, they can’t wash. Without me, their dogs and plants die. Without me, everything dies. So they keep track of me, to make sure I am always there when they need me, always gone when I am scary. When I rain, they measure and predict what I’ll do, they get worried when I stay too long. There are apps and TV programs just for figure out how I am. When I am the sea, I am the happy place. My properties are monitored to make sure I am safe to swim in. If I rise, alarm systems trigger gates that close and make people move. I am one, real and physical - still, each of my digital copies shows another side of me, another view on what water is, what water means.

I am the DATASCAPE.

The datascape is the layer underneath everything physical. If you rip out a piece of the real world, the datascape shows. We rarely take a moment to ponder on both the importance as well as the impact of our datascape: how we have come to rely on it, what the physical reality of the masses of information is, what their climate impact is. Should we be excited or scared? Optimistic about the possibilities or pessimistic about its impact? Next time you have to wait for the bus, look around you and try to visualize all the hidden datastreams around you - I am sure you’ll be impressed with how many you find.

"Datascape" was the theme of INDESEM.21. Want to know more about how the board chose this theme? Read INDESEM.21 chairman Hidde's reflection on page 26.