PostRational, founded in 2016 by Dan Gavshon-Kirkbride and James Pockson, proposes an exhibition for Forecast around cyber-waste, a neologism that describes both eWaste, the physical refuse of dead or redundant electronic goods; and digital detritus, the materiality of digital infrastructure and the digital economy.
This includes the carbon footprint of data centers, the hidden logistics infrastructure of the digital economy, the inextricable links between cloud computing and fossil fuels, and the persistent paradigm of the Internet as an archive of behavioral experimentation and not a technology of communication. Their project suggests that a critical study of cyber-waste and the risks and the opportunities it presents, will help us identify highly relevant interconnected questions about energy systems, disposability, resource exhaustion, and social coordination in the twenty-first century.
At the digital Forecast Forum, PostRational will show a short film introducing Cyber-Waste as a concept, and its ambition as a provocation for discussing the pressing issue of discard effects emerging from the network and the digital economy. This will be followed by a short talk, an invitation to take part in the Cyber-Waste platform. "We envisage Cyber-Waste as a piece of living research, a space, and a vehicle for various publics to contribute and explore the multiple threads relating to the ecosocial waste streams brought about by our digital systems."
