Crafting a Healthier Internet: People, Things and our Digital Society

该项目的目的是探索我们如何利用工艺的精神和实践、人文知识、技术知识和公民参与来定义和促进人、互联网和事物之间的健康关系。/合作。互联网是社会的一股强大力量。自从万维网诞生以来，互联网就被认为是一个充满奇迹、创造力和机会的地方。然而，它目前正处于一个非常有问题的位置：假新闻，权力集中，对选定数量的技术巨头的主导控制，虚假信息，社交媒体的武器化，民主进程的破坏，对公民的大规模操纵，网络犯罪和滥用个人数据被国际公认为重大关切领域。随着越来越多的日常物品连接到互联网，成为物联网（IoT）的一部分，这些信任，隐私，安全和滥用数据的问题将变得更加紧迫，因为对Alexa等智能扬声器的窃听能力的焦虑证明。此外，人们普遍认识到，甚至提倡，工业设计已经导致数字技术公司能够显着扩大其产品的覆盖范围（苹果是最明显的例子）。然而，这导致了一种完全不可持续的、同质的全球文化，即两年生命周期的设备和一个被少数美国和中国公司“殖民”的互联网。这些问题并不能完全通过技术创新和工具解决方案来解决。它们需要考虑互联网企业所建立的基本精神和结构的社会和道德影响和后果（有意或无意）的举措。我们将与Mozilla合作，并受到他们的互联网健康报告的启发，我们正在挑战现有的物联网概念化和实施的“不健康”方式（即将经济商业模式置于用户代理之上，缺乏开放性，透明度和易读性），并为物联网发展提供另一种“更健康”的轨迹。虽然设计往往渴望无处不在和标准化，但工艺却因特殊性和定制性而蓬勃发展，这往往植根于地方主义，并体现了真实性，出处和关怀的价值观。通过在地方层面的工作，在考虑和生产方面，我们寻求为物联网的概念化和创造形式带来新的视角和方法，体现我们的工艺精神。因此，我们将创建具有特定背景、有意义和可信的物联网形式的引人注目的例子，以探索和理解我们可以改变整个行业当前轨迹的方法。该项目位于英格兰东北部，将与当地团体、企业、组织和个人密切合作，与来自设计、工艺和人文学科的专家一起评论现有的物联网产品。以工艺为中心的探索将导致对物联网工件可能是什么和做什么的彻底反思，超出了既定的物联网比喻（例如亚马逊Echo，谷歌Nest，LG的Alexa供电冰箱）。这些将为参与式共同设计活动和一系列新物联网设备的生产提供信息，参与者将在几个月内使用这些设备。该项目将调查个人、互联网和事物之间的四个关系尺度：人+身体、人+家、人+邻里、人+城镇/农村地区。这些规模背景将使人们能够在多个层面上调查个人与其更广泛的环境之间有意义和可持续的关系形式，最终提供物联网的激进新范例资源和更健康的数字未来路线图（即物联网新方法和概念化的建议）。

The aim for this project is to explore how we can define and foster a healthy relationship between people, the internet and things using the ethos and practices of craft, informed by knowledge within the humanities, augmented with technical know-how and leveraging citizen engagement/collaboration. The internet is a powerful force in society. Since the inception of the World Wide Web, the internet was held up as a place of wonder, creativity and opportunity. Yet it is currently in a very problematic position: fake news, centralisation of power, the dominant control of a select number of technology giants, disinformation, the weaponization of social media, the undermining of democratic processes, mass manipulation of citizens, cyber crimes and abuse of personal data are internationally recognised as areas of significant concern. As more and more everyday objects become internet-connected, become part of the Internet of Things (IoT), these questions of trust, privacy, security and abuse of data will become more pressing, as anxieties over the eavesdropping capabilities of smart speakers such as Alexa demonstrate. Furthermore, it is widely recognised, and even promoted, that industrial design has led to a step-change in the way that digital technology companies are able to significantly amplify the reach of their products (Apple being the most obvious example). Yet this has led to a wholly unsustainable, homogeneous, global culture of two-year life-cycle devices and an internet that is being 'colonised' by a handful of US and Chinese companies. These issues are not ones that can be addressed exclusively with technological innovation and instrumental solutions. They require initiatives that consider the social and ethical implications and consequences (intended or not) of the underlying ethos and structure on which internet businesses are founded. We will be partnering with Mozilla, and inspired by their Internet Health Report, we are challenging existing 'unhealthy' ways in which the IoT is being conceptualised and implemented (i.e. privileging economic business models over user agency, lacking openness, transparency and legibility) and provide an alternative 'healthier' trajectory for IoT development. While design often aspires to ubiquity and standardisation, craft thrives on specificity and bespokeness, which is often rooted in localism, and embodies the values of authenticity, provenance and care. Through working at a local level, in terms of both consideration and production, we seek to bring new perspectives and methods for conceptualizing and creating forms of IoT, embodying our craft ethos. As such we will create compelling examples of context specific, meaningful and trusted forms IoT in order to explore and understand the ways that we can change current trajectories across the sector.Based in the North East of England, this project will work closely with local groups, businesses, organisations and individuals, alongside experts from design, craft and the Humanities to critique existing IoT offerings. Craft centred explorations will result in radical reimaginings of what an IoT artifact might be and do, falling outside established IoT tropes (E.g. Amazon Echo, Google Nest, LG's Alexa powered fridge). These will inform participatory co-design activities and the production of a series of new IoT devices that participants will live with over several months. The project will investigate four scales of relationship between individual people, the internet and things: Person + Body, Person + Home, Person + Neighbourhood, Person + Town/Rural region. These contexts of scale will enable the investigation of meaningful and sustainable forms of relationship between an individual and their wider environment at a number of levels, ultimately providing a resource of radical new exemplars of IoT and a roadmap to a healthier digital future (i.e. recommendations for new approaches to, and conceptualisations of IoT).