Solar Protocol: Exploring Energy-Centered Design

Status:: 🟥
Links:: Carbon-Aware Computing

Metadata

Authors:: Brain, Tega; Nathanson, Alex; Piantella, Benedetta
Title:: Solar Protocol: Exploring Energy-Centered Design
Date:: 2022
Publisher:: LIMITS
URL:: https://limits.pubpub.org/pub/solar/release/1
DOI::

Bibliography

Brain, T., Nathanson, A., & Piantella, B. (2022, June 21). Solar Protocol: Exploring Energy-Centered Design. Computing within Limits. Eighth Workshop on Computing within Limits 2022. https://limits.pubpub.org/pub/solar/release/1

Zotero

Type:: #zotero/conferencePaper
Zotero::

Keywords:: []

Relations

Abstract

Solar Protocol is an experimental web platform hosted across a network of solar-powered servers, installed and maintained by volunteers in different locations around the planet. Although a solar-powered server’s connectivity is intermittent as it is powered by available sunlight, when connected in a network, the network can be designed to direct web traffic to whichever server is enjoying the most sunshine at the time. In doing this, Solar Protocol uses the distribution of sunshine across the planet as a form of logic that determines where computational work is done. By automating decisions according to environmental dynamics, the project explores a kind of "natural" intelligence rather than artificial intelligence. Solar Protocol works in concert with limits defined by local energy availability and thereby explores an energy-centered design. We sketch out six principles of energy-centered design, offering these as provocations for further work.