Every month I send out a sample of my current work, whatever I am working on, or have just published–always hopeful, sometimes draft. Subscribe or read them below.

2026

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January

An electricity atlas would have pages or layers of information relating to a geographic region. The carbon intensity of electricity and other data used in power-purchase agreements would be transformed into related, perhaps overlayed, pages. [...] 

We can speculate on five more livable futures that might result from data industries living with such an unflat electricity atlas. [...]

A) A data center operator wants to reduce their carbon emissions and considers investing in a North Sea offshore wind farm. They look at the electricity atlas and learn that there are risks due to a lack of local grid reinforcement and public concerns around the siting of substations in peatland, which is important for both carbon sequestration and wildlife. 

The operator looks at the resource map and notes the massive potential for tide energy up the coast, where a local organization has uploaded a report on a tide energy array that has planning permission. Therefore, the data center operator makes an investment to support the popular tide energy array, not in the delayed offshore wind farm. This supports the future of a precarious coastal community.

B) An urban data center operator is considering how to upgrade its backup power, which is a diesel generator. They want to reduce their carbon footprint but have limited space. 

They look at the electricity atlas and discover there is a local energy company that represents houses and businesses in the city who have formed an energy community.1 They have home batteries, solar panels, electric car charges, and thermal storage, which they balance among themselves and from which they sell electricity to the grid. 

The urban data center contracts this local organization to provide their backup power and forms a long-term, trusting relationship with them.


Sample from my latest journal article with Julia Velkova ‘From Flatlands to Livable Futures: Unflattening Carbon Metrics in the Energy and Data Industries' published in Big Data & Society 12 (4). doi.org/10.1177/20539517251396074. 

Read the full article (open access).

References
1. Chemnitz NØ, Bonnet P, Büttrich S, et al. (2021) Unionized data governance in virtual power plants. In: Proceedings of the Twelfth ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems. New York: ACM, 282–283.

February

Kara waved at the white table and gestured me to sit. I chose the least uncomfortable looking chair, the one with the least bent legs, and sat in genuine pleasure, pulling off my heavy jacket. She reached down to a cardboard box on the floor, and pulled out two not-entirely-clean tumblers, along with a bottle of 18 Year Highland Park whisky, which instantly made me grin and give marginally less of a care about who she was–and what this place was. If she was the kind of person that could produce a decent bottle of whisky out of a cardboard box, then she and I were going to get on famously. (It's a pretty high bribery bar, that's stuff’s not cheap.)

She dropped into one of the other assorted chairs, wobbled for a moment, and with a practiced kick, shoved a paper wedge under the offending, missing chair foot. I nodded my acknowledgement of her skill. The chairs must have been rejects from the Heritage Centre. They were old and well-used, for sure. 

Kara leaned back, tripped her feet up on another chair and poured two drams. We raised our glasses, two islanders toasting the new year. 

“Skål!” We both said, together. 

I blinked, surprised at her. That was my line, borrowed from my Scandinavian friends. No matter. 

I stretched my spine, leaned back, and enjoyed being out of the haar. I had no idea where I was, no idea who I was with. But my companion was an islander, and one with whom I did not have to navigate twenty years of history and family feuds. At least, not yet. All I had to do was let the whisky coat my cold bones with honey.

The imagined servos under my face stopped whirring, my hard smile was gone, and I felt a dreamy blankness roll over my features like a calm sea. My eyes rested on Kara, her head back, enjoying her dram, unconcerned with me. She seemed older now, or more ageless.

On my now calm face, I felt the dimpling of stars, twinkling in my cheeks. 

"I don't know what this is.” I waved at the building. "But it's great – I can feel it’s great.” 

And I could. The building felt right. It felt like it belonged here. I felt right. I felt like I belonged here.

Kara nodded. “It took a bit to get the data centre here. Someone, I won't say who, of course, practically sailed off in protest. I'll not get any tea from that house.” (House? Haus? Hoose? I could not get her accent.) “But if we can do energy, then we can do data, right? It's all just cables and poles. All just the same stuff.”

“Absolutely!” I toasted her. 


Sample from a work-in-progress, a revised version of 'Datahowe: Speculative fable of a data centre under the hill' for an edited book on Speculative Ethnography (being edited by Kathrin Eitel and Chakad Ojani).

Read the first version published in 'Orkney Cloud' magazine.