This chapter discusses what a good digital infrastructure for AI could mean, and for whom. It explores the frictions that emerge when communities, industries and public institutions collectively try to imagine and materialize multiple versions of the “good”. Drawing on the concept of “friction” and valuation studies, we analyse the establishment of a data centre for AI systems with a sustainability profile in Östersund in Sweden. We show how such digital infrastructure emerges from the friction between differing local understandings of liveable futures and between quantifiable and non-measurable qualities of the good, such as sense of place, belonging, trust and living a life with nature. Ultimately, we propose an expansion of the ongoing discussion on the sustainability of digital infrastructure and a reorientation of attention from questions of quantifiable and measurable harms, such as carbon emissions, to concerns with power and valuations through which the different qualities of “good” infrastructure come to fruition and contention.

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The Good Infrastructure: Digital Futures, Values and Friction

  • Johanna Sefyrin,
  • Julia Velkova

摘要

This chapter discusses what a good digital infrastructure for AI could mean, and for whom. It explores the frictions that emerge when communities, industries and public institutions collectively try to imagine and materialize multiple versions of the “good”. Drawing on the concept of “friction” and valuation studies, we analyse the establishment of a data centre for AI systems with a sustainability profile in Östersund in Sweden. We show how such digital infrastructure emerges from the friction between differing local understandings of liveable futures and between quantifiable and non-measurable qualities of the good, such as sense of place, belonging, trust and living a life with nature. Ultimately, we propose an expansion of the ongoing discussion on the sustainability of digital infrastructure and a reorientation of attention from questions of quantifiable and measurable harms, such as carbon emissions, to concerns with power and valuations through which the different qualities of “good” infrastructure come to fruition and contention.