Ben Jackson consultation

[franciscrot]

This is a record of Ben's comments ... we talked about a lot of things, but one big concern was, "How do we stop this from turning into more top-down, often-arbitrary bureaucratic compliance?"

PUBLISHING
As a researcher, you can just publish a PDF without professional services involvement
But you can at least create a website to include your research, right?
The website may come under university accessibility policy etc. which is already onerous
Will decarbonisation create more barriers
Double standard - interruption of wages for freelance work
Involvement of central administration in publishing research findings
Word ... we don't usually teach people how to get it to the point where it's easy for a publisher

WEBSITES
The static vs. dynamic section has some qualifications ("it's not as simple as static = better" etc.) but maybe needs a little more?
Pointing to technologies that are lower carbon, because they don't have access to same set of databases
E.g. dynamic websites
Sussex: gives you Wordpress for free
Web team have a Wordpress installation and will serve it out to anybody
Helping researchers, or putting another barrier because they can't use the version presented by university
Universities lobbying Wordpress? - can we have a less dynamic version, fewer flops etc.?
Write in html? Nobody can
(Saving in Word makes crap HTML)
You can use Word in ways that create good mark-up (write in outline mode till you don't need to)
You CAN get InDesign to be more interoperable with Word ... getting the right the logical document structure

MINIMALIST COMPUTING
If you have to render the page, so it's a dynamically built page, there is extra calculation going on, right?
Or is it?
Is a static website sometimes more costly, because the processing is distributed across every reader
If it were PURELY static (text in a book), that might be a bit different ... that's the dream
But there's normally some amount of drawing in some pictures, some other resources, etc.
A map, any use of JS, etc.
For a fairly static site with some server side elements
Trade-off between database access or file access - database access may be worse, but sometimes it's the same as file store, but way quicker
If a video is popular, I can stick it on a content delivery network
E.g. Amazon's catalogue - those pictures exist all around the world
Content delivery networks
Worst case scenario: Every part of the "static" page is dynamically generated on the client's device
Harder to measure
Cf. Mark Weiser, ubiquitous computing - computations disappearing into the fabric of the world
Now is a pivotal moment where we can interact with this and affect what's happening
Deepen your understanding with a resource analysis. What does my presentation need?
Might mean asking not to use Sussex's Wordpress
How do we estimate the flops?
Engineering resource analysis
iPhone browsers won't render PDFs - forces you to make it a downloadable resource and view it in the PDF viewer
Landscape changes every year
Is what we're trying to do impossible?
Decision tree: is it a software project?
"My website has these resources"

• audience ... is site specialised and niche?

LOBBYING
How much will we save in computation by switching away from Wordpress?
Making a new post, a person driving onto campus, eating flopjacks etc.

WHO IS A SPECIALIST?
Mainstreaming construction of dynamic logic system
Creating a digital interface for a library catalogue
E.g. importing the idiosyncrasies of a specialist library
Web servers keep logs of all the things that have gone on
If those logs start to include costs (traffic, all the hops around the different nodes, audited by the services that provide them - Cisco etc.)

DATA CARBON ANALYTICS
Bringing together data - everything runs through Cisco routers, wires, etc.
Better way to accumulate the full resource use of all our data interactions
"Cost of gas" for making the system run ... How do we get the level of granularity?
The only way to reeeaallly know this is to measure it, and measuring it isn't simple
The researcher needs to be empowered to work it out for themselves

BEN'S EXTREMELY SMART HOME
We talked about this as well -- actually feels very relevant
A little guidance about how you could set up a lab with smart plugs etc. to monitor energy usage
Questions around data privacy
Control
New knowledge leading to new habits and new perspectives