A Future Of Internets

From Energy Literacy to Fossil-Free Imaginaries

As a kick-off of FIBER’s Reassemble Lab ‘Natural Intelligence’, this public programme invited artists, technologists, researchers and policy makers to reflect upon the possibilities of a fossil-free internet based on ecological ethics and regenerative principles.

The immense possibilities of today’s internet services, data centres, artificial intelligence and rendered computer graphics have been made possible by a large supply of cheap energy sources: fossil fuels. The promises of yet another generation of artificial intelligence and the rise of the metaverse and NFT’s are unthinkable without the endless extraction and flow of fossil energy. Many are already talking about ‘data warming‘ as one of the strongly growing drivers of global warming.

The first part of the programme was also part of MozFest, the online festival by Mozilla, and will discuss the themes of Energy Literacy and Fossil-Free Imaginaries. You can still get familiar with the topic with Marloes de Valk (software artist, writer and PhD researcher at the London South Bank University), Michelle Thorne (Sustainable Internet Lead at the Mozilla Foundation and co-founder of Branch Magazine), Shayna Robinson (futurist, tech environmentalist, Program Officer for the Internet Society Foundation’s Research and Innovation Programs) and Abdelrahman (Abdo) Hassan (data science practitioner, activist and poet). 

The second part discussed the themes of Everyday Technologies and Collective Infrastructures with Tega Brain (artist, environmental engineer and co-founder of Solar Protocol), Kim van Sparrentak (member of the European Parliament for GroenLinks), Mick Jongeling (design researcher interested in ethics, energy and transformation strategies) and Aymeric Mansoux (media researcher and Reader at the WdKA).