Tech beyond the myth

6th & 7th week - 08 / 15 November

During this week we approached technology form a totally different point of view. We had two different workshops where we were divided by groups, keeping a collaborative environment. From dissemble a machine to understanding the vary data gathering methods. Now we can understand technology not just as a mere user observing black boxes from the outside, but as users or even makers that comprehend all the work and steps that have been taken to produce any of our daily life devices. Acquiring enough knowledge to be able to ask the right question and find possible partner ships.

Seminar notes

Forensics of the obsolescence

In order to persuade this approach, we were asked to create a forensic report of some different devices that for some reason they are no longer useful. There was a Roomba a tv, an induction stove, an iMac and a macbook. By dissembling all this different machines we learn that some could have been broken by a simple error of one of the parts or that the machine was obsolete due to the new softwares.

We should start to make ourselves some questions about all our technology goods. What is obsolescence? How much E-waste are we going to keep producing? Why companies don't offer the users the right to repair? How long is the supply change of any device? How much carbon emissions for a " simple" phone? At what cost were this devices produced? How much of the manufacturing process was actually human labor and how much automation processes? How much material and natural resources were extracted to build a device?

My group was formed by: Anna, George, Gerda, Nikita, Marina, Tatiana and me. We ripped apart a 2003 apple Macbook. Found the link to the Hack MD journal below:
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Forensic Report: APPLE Powerbook

Forensic Report: APPLE Powerbook - HackMD

Forensic Report: APPLE Powerbook

Identity of the reporting agency MDEF
Case identifier Forensics of the Obsolescence
Identity of the submitter Someone at the Fab Lab
Date of receipt 09/11/2021
Date of report 09/11/2021
Identity and signature of the examiner Marina, George, Anna, Tatiana, Paula, Gerda, Nikita

Examination

serial number: A1046
Brand: Apple (in California)
Model: Powerbook G4
Color: silver
Assemblied in: Taiwan
Rated: 25.4VDC
Specifications: Canadian ICES-003 Class B
Tested: FCC standards (Home or Office use)

Forensic Questions

What does it do?
An electronic device that can store large amounts of information and be given sets of instructions to organize and change it very quickly.

How does it work?

  • the chargeable battery provides power
  • the CPU provides computational power
  • the GPU processes the graphics
  • the RAM stores the short-term data and ensures the speed
  • the hard drive stores data indefinitely
  • the motherboard connects everything together and runs the operation system
  • the wifi cards and telecommunication chip provide access to the internet wireless and with a cable
  • the two fans cool the system down
  • the two speakers provide audio

How it’s built?

  • body (aluminium)
  • inner part (magnesium)
  • screws
  • cables

We assume that part of the construction was automated and the small details had human intervention.

Why it failed, or it wasn’t used anymore?
We believe that one of the two fans were damaged possibly leading the CPU to overheat and melt.
We guess the whole laptop is not usable anymore due to its outdated components.

Steps taken

Opening the laptop

  1. battery (15inch, rechargeable batterie, Li-ion, no mercury, 10.8V)
  2. lid of the RAM (produced by Samsung in Korea 0351)
  3. 2 RAM memory cards (each card includes: 4xK4H561638D-TLB3 and 256MB)
  4. remove the exterior screws
  5. safety check popped out voiding the warranty


Inside the laptop

  1. hard drive (made in Thailand, assembled in China)
  2. air port extreme / wifi part (assemblied in Taiwan)
  3. wifi connector (Korea&Mexico)
  4. 2 fans
  5. battery to remember the time
  6. cd reader (Japan)
  7. a case to insert another memory card
  8. sensors under the speakerplates to check the brightness in the environment with a photodiode (BS520, Brand: sharp)
  9. on-off-button
  10. two speakers
  11. motherboard
  12. two RAM-cards
  13. various ports




Inside the display

  1. remove all the screws
  2. take off the frame and separate it in two parts (aluminium/plastic)
  3. take apart the 6 layers for light (6 different materials) and 1 layer for pictures
  4. observe the horizontal light (LED-stripe) on the top edge



Inside the keyboard

  1. Remove all the keys/bottons
  2. take off the first plastic layer with the attachments
  3. take off the second layer which includes the programming
  4. observe the light cables for the keyboard
  5. power the keyboard to understand how the fiber optic cables light up.



Results

How many motors we find inside, does it contain a computer or microcontroller?

  • it is a computer. some components contained motors (CD ROM, HDD) but overall the object’s primary function was no motor-related.

Did the appliance fail, why?

  • we didn´t turn it on so we cannot know for sure.

Conclusions

Overall, it was a lot of fun to disassemble the laptop and examine all the parts to see how they work and which ones are connected.

Opinions

What do you learn?

  • parts mostly made and assembled in Asia
  • how many different parts one laptop contains
  • the warranty was void almost immediately. nowadays you wouldn’t even be able to open new macbooks so easily.

What surprised you?

  • a big amount of screws (about 100)
  • how many countries were involved in the production
  • many of the components inside the macbook were not produced by Apple, but instead companies like Samsung, Intel and Motorola
  • how much the technology changed in a short time
  • how precise the parts were integrated and connected to each other
  • how difficult it was to dissamble it - they don’t want us on the inside.

Example images


A world in data

Data gathering methods and the importance of data. Understanding how data can give us power. By having an open source of data we can place the power of decision making on the individuals. We were divided by groups to perform a more accessible approach to data. First it is important to set an objective, followed by asking questions and finally setting a hypothesis. There were different data gathering tools like Smart citizen kit, Pi camera, Web Scraping, Physical intervention, GPS Mobile location, Arduino LDR sensor. My group used a web scraping method for researching our hypothesis, the food from the vending machine of Iaac is not local.

Food origins

Journal: Local Foods - HackMD

Journal: Local Foods

MDEF: Measuring the world / A world in data activity report.

A report by: Angel Cho, Chris Ernst, Julia Steketee, Paula Del Rio, Tattiana Butts and Vikrant Mishra.

Journal Index

From objectives to the hypothesis

Brainstorming

Project Goals

Objective:
We want to eat more locally produced food.

Question:
Where does our food come from?

Hypothesis:
the majority of food in the vending machine is not locally produced.

Tips

Explain one or more mistakes you’ve done during that phase?
What would you change if will do it again?

Our expectations were too high: we assumed that a lot of the data regarding food production would be available to the public.
Maybe we could re-orient our objective from location to nutrition.

From hypothesis to data

Tools selection

Post multiple images about the tool. What tool did you use? Would you choose a different tool now?

Web scraping: Manually and Automated through python

Finding websites that have databases about food production, import and export

Oec

ITC Trade Map

Tool usage documentation

How can others replicate your data capturing process again?

They can find the base code of our web scraping tool on the FabLab hackmd (Here.)

All database sources are written below.

Data capturing strategy

How do you combine the tool provided with your creativity to prove your hypothesis? How long did you capture data?

We decided which categories to research, basing ourselves on the ingredients within IAAC’s specific vending machine. We started small, then built up until we reached a global scale of interconnected supply chains.

Materials needed

List all the materials needed, including those given to you, those you source or even things you built yourself.

Techniques used:

  • Manual “web scraping”
  • Automated web scraping
  • Scanning products through Open Food Facts app
  • Researching through food brand website

Resources used:

Detail setup instructions

Explain the setup process. You can simply publish multiple images about your setup.

Map of our process:

Data collected

Describe the raw data you collected by posting a sample i.e. a picture, a screen capture, etc.

Excel sheets generated from open food facts:

Map from open food facts

Excel sheet from ITC trade map

via GIPHY

Interactive map from OEC

Interactive map from CIAT

Thanks to all of these sources, we managed to cross reference the information which we obtained. We noticed many differences from one resource to the other.

Data capture

Data summary

Data Summary
Project Title Food Origins
Capture Start 11-11-2021
Capture End 12-11-2021
Original Data Format Website html
Submitted format CSV file
Total Data Points approximately 5000
Number of datasets 5 seperate files
Data Repository https://github.com/fablabbcn/mdef-a-world-in-data

Data insights

Post at least two images of a chart, a screen-shoot of your data, that you used to prove if your hypothesis is false.

We were surprised to see that the Natwins cookies claimed their product was “local”. However, they do not define what exactly local means, and later state that their ingredients come from the “Mediterranean”.
The mediterranean area includes 21 countries, which means that the food origins are almost untraceable (Albania, Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Libya, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Slovenia, Spain, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey)

We decided to buy a sandwich from the vending machine and trace the possible origins of the main ingredients, using OEC’s data concerning Spain’s imported products.
The unit of measurement was the value of product in USD$ and not in tonnes.

The primary ingredients of the sandwich were:

  • wheat
  • pig meat
  • cheese
  • nuts
  • eggs
  • yeast
  • olive oil

And these were the primary imports in Spain:

via GIPHY

Of course, this only displays the probability of where each component originated if they were imported.

Web scraping v/s Open APIs

Sometimes it might be beneficial to see if there is an open API to access a database instead of going for web scraping the frontend data right away. In the case of Openfoodfacts.com, they offered an open and very well-documented API, offering various export formats. This allowed us to easily download and analyze the complete dataset for the product category of ‘sandwiches’. This was made possible thanks to all the data being covered by the Open Data Commons License.

Conclusions

It is very difficult to retrieve information about where food comes and goes
There is a lack of transparency regarding the movement of goods
There is no detailed information available to the public about food sources
Recognising that Web Scraping is an option, but not always the best or more efficient one.

Tips

Explain one or more mistakes you’ve done during that phase? What would you change if will do it again? What if you will have more time? (max 560 char)

Defining a more specific target in our hypothesis, would have allowed us to access more relevant information.

Possibly using a different context (restaurant, grocery store) would have yielded more interesting results.

Find the full group presentation here

Activity conducted by Angel Cho, Chris Ernst, Julia Steketee, Tattiana Butts, Paula Del Rio and Vikrant Mishra.