Session Chair: Blake Hallinan
Presentation 1
Cloud as Infrastructure: Theorising the links between ‘big’ tech and ‘small’ tech
Devika Narayan
University of Bristol, United Kingdom
Cloud providers, by creating and owning massive computing assets, produce new internet infrastructure. Large-scale data centres that aggregate hardware resources are an important element shaping the expansion of platform economies. The impact of this configuration of hardware on the dynamics of software development is still unclear. There is growing scholarship on data centres, however the aggregation of a highly scalable hardware system has a profound impact on industry dynamics. Cloud computing lowers the upfront cost of using and owning computing systems. The wide-ranging impact of platforms is explained at least in part by cloud infrastructure: the scalable provisioning of computing resources via the internet. I identify virtualized hardware, modularity, resource sharing, and externalisation as generative of a new internet-based infrastructure. I show these coalesce to form a new industry dynamic, with hardware centralisation on the one hand and decentralisation of cloud users and complement developers on the other. Scholarship in this area is beginning to examine the relations between dominant technology corporations and their networks of users and third-party companies. I contribute to this by examining changing organizational and market dynamics introduced by cloud computing. The findings and analysis are derived from two related studies of changing industrial practices. I focus on the anatomy of the infrastructure and how it activates a new set of relations between start-ups, developers, entrepreneurs, and investors. What is the techno-organisational structure of cloud computing? In answering this, the presentation will offer a view into cloud ecosystems from an industry level and organisational level.
Presentation 2
From Global to Local: A Study of Offline-First Community Infrastructure Development
Zenna Emma Linnea Fiscella
Aarhus University, Denmark
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the move from global to local, in relation to FLOSS software projects and their implementation in local communities. The need stems from a gradual ecological collapse which brings about unforeseeable consequences to human civilization and infrastructures. By investigating the process of global development to local infrastructure, more resilient and localized communication solutions can be implemented.
Findings
This paper aims to find the challenges in moving from global software development to a local implementation of open source infrastructure by mapping out the issues offline-first protocols face in reaching a stage of local implementation of their development and the issues communities face in implementing their own communication infrastructures. These findings can support the steps of moving from global software development projects to locally implemented infrastructures.
Method
The method is based on semi-structured interviews with four communities and four protocols with a minimum of 2 interviews with each project and community. At the end of the project an online workshop is hosted enabling collective reflection for the communities and projects, and potential knowledge sharing.
Originality
The research of moving from global to local is extensively explored through the scaling and commercialization of software. By flipping the approach around and looking at global software developments implementation in local communities this paper delves into a relatively unexplored, and necessary, area of research. The research also supports the active implementation of FLOSS projects for real communities striving towards data-sovereignty and local infrastructures.
Presentation 3
WHO KILLED STADIA: PLATFORM AND INFRASTRUCTURE IN CLOUD GAMING
Jean-Christophe Plantin(1), Alex Gekker(2), Zichen Hu(1)
1: London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom; 2: Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands
Cloud gaming is a mode of content provision whereby games are processed on remote servers, allowing players to “stream” games instead of downloading or playing them locally. We analyze Google’s failed cloud gaming service Stadia which, despite high momentum in the industry at the time of its release in 2019, was unceremoniously shut down in 2023. To discover who (or what) killed Stadia, we conducted a thematic analysis of around 200 documents revealing the points of view of the main actors involved in the case: gamers, third-party game developers, and Google’s Stadia team. Preliminary results reveal that Google failed on both components of its hybrid nature. As a platform, it failed to incentivize game studios to develop or distribute high-quality and exclusive games for Stadia. Such a catalog necessarily failed to attract a substantial number of gamers. As an infrastructure, it failed to leverage Google’s Cloud network to tackle the fundamental challenge of cloud gaming i.e., to bypass last-mile connectivity issues to deliver dynamic content. With this paper, we take stock of the rising importance of cloud gaming as a key topic in game studies. We also contribute to the scholarship on the infrastructural power of platform companies by emphasizing the importance of community engagement, market dynamics, and the materiality of infrastructure in the success—and failure—of tech giants.
Presentation 4
SURREPTITIOUS EXPERIMENTATION: DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURES AND STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE IN THE HUMANITARIAN INDUSTRY.
Mirca Madianou
Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom
The humanitarian sector is known for its reliance on technological pilots as part of the digitisation and datafication of aid operations. This paper outlines a new type of technological experimentation which I term surreptitious experimentation. This type of experimentation is possible as digital technologies and practices become enmeshed with the infrastructures of aid. This process of infrastructuring allows for a continuous flow of experimentation, which is not named as such, and which operates in the infrastructural background, and therefore remains hidden – yet in plain sight. Surreptitious experiments take place outside the laboratory, without clear boundaries, meaningful consent or processes of accountability. In so doing, surreptitious experiments compound the power asymmetries of humanitarianism with significant risks and harms for some of the world’s most vulnerable people.
