“Second, even though the nomadic trajectory may follow trails or customary routes, it does not fulfill the function of the sedentary road, which is to parcel out a closed space to people, assigning each person a share and regulating the communication between shares. The nomadic trajectory does the opposite: it distributes people (or animals) in an open space, one that is indefinite and noncommunicating.”
Gill Deleuze, Treatise on nomadology — The War Machine
Rationale: In the age of immense accumulation of data, manifested especially in the age of LLM when use data is exploited with no restriction, there are many questions raised on the rightful usage and management of data, data privacy is the most discussed yet most compromised side of it.
As a new economy, platform-based digital labor refers to the doubling of production, in which a user either produce data as the raw material of the digital product or acting as the product itself.The short-circuit of consumer and worker reveals possibilities in the software and web services.
The location of a device is one of the most used data passively collected. There’re two products that are entirely dependent on the scale effect of user-generated location data: AirTag and Live Map. AirTag is tracked with near-field communication to nearby Apple devices; the live map use a large dataset of the position data to update and predict congestion of a part of road, it is then displayed on the client-side as a service.
The platform is not simply online.It is by nature full-stack systems that function in every dimension of our modern life to utilize and effectively analyze the data to produce new services and products.
The surveillance involved in these massive systems is unprecedented, and data privacy doesn’t seem to be a feasible goal. Thus, I propose to step back, and first rethink about how we may seize back the data produced by all but owned by a few, connecting the nodes to democratize the scale effect of the Big Data services from bottom up.
To approach this issue that we may call “data justice” or “data right”, it is necessary to imagine a full-stack system that can be an alternative way to provide the service with large scale data.
“All computing is physical.” —Tom Igoe
Data collection, as for all other forms of computings, is determined by the most basic level of the system: hardware.The end nodes of Internet we interact with everyday are ultimately the origin of data acquisition by cloud capitals.
A system that may be able to provide a solution to the problems in the current mode of data acquisition has to be open. It has to be both anonymous and public, presenting many technical challenges.
In the graph, I mapped out the major nodes in a typical platform-based data acquisition system. It is a complex system that stretches across physical and digital, client-side and server-side. It is mediated by the Internet.
This is commonsensical, but where can we find cracks in this system to escape from this new form of control and ownership?I start by replacing some terms:
Meshtastic is an open-source mesh networking project that enables long-range communication through portable radio nodes. Using LoRa radio technology, it creates a decentralized network where each device can send encrypted messages and GPS data to other nodes without traditional internet infrastructure. Each node acts as both a transmitter and relay, extending the network's range and reliability.This open source project is a rather success one with an active online community. Some even call it “phone replacement.” There’s also a number of open hardwares and 3D-printed enclosures designed for Meshtastic released by makers or manufacturers.
Being used as a decentralized system already, LoRa devices offers many features and possibilities that match the system we imagine here.
- Open source and community support
- Readily available hardware
- Modifiable Hardware and Firmware
- LoRaWAN: a LoRa-based web gateway enabling mediated internet access
The attached image is an example of open hardware for LoRa: T-Beam SUPREME by LilyGo. It’s a ESP32-based module with LoRa and GNSS abilities. It would be a great starting point for a project like I proposed.
End Node
An end node is an hardware capable of collecting and uploading data: like a DIY-ed open hardware.
Nomad Gateway
When an end node is enabled for the Nomad, it can be connected to the gateway via LoRa. The gateway has a role to anonymize and flatten the uploaded data before the data reach the internet.
Open Database
As the data is uploaded, a database will host all acquired data. This database will be communally maintained.
Front-End Visual
A front-end visualization of the data will be delivered as the goal for the project, it will be helpful for research or used as a service to understand phenomenons with data at scale.
A possible methodology of Subaltern Computing is as introduced in the project: a systematic approach combing openness and community-driven goals, built with standardized part and distributively manufacturable designs. The project then has the potential of weakening the control with the minor literature of spontaneous actions.
I developed a prototype visualization using D3.js that receives data from the server and renders it in the web frontend. The prototype creates a heat map overlaid on New York's Five Boroughs, displaying the geographic distribution of selected data values.The demo is available here: https://yuxiangcheng2002.github.io/Data-Nomad-Visual/