Online Writing

Image: a mechanical electricity meter. Picture in the public domain. Modern infrastructures for energy, water and communications are systems of collective provision, often organised and financed by the state. The appliances that are plugged into these infrastructures – such as laptops, washing machines or electric cars – are considered to be individual consumption goods, provided by the…

Downtown Chicago. Photo credit: Charles Voogd, Wikipedia Commons. The information society promises to dematerialise society and make it more sustainable, but modern office and knowledge work has itself become a large and rapidly growing consumer of energy and other resources.  Welcome to the Office These days, it's rather easy to define an "office worker": it's someone who sits in front of…

Sanneke Kloppenburg, Robin Smale & Nick Verkade (sanneke.kloppenburg@wur.nl) The rise of renewable energy generated by wind turbines and PV poses challenges to the balancing of supply and demand of electricity. Solar panels only generate energy during day time, whereas a peak in consumption takes place in the evening. Storage of renewable energy near to their decentralized sources, at…

Yolande Strengers & Mikkel Bille Academia is increasingly concerned with international connections and collaboration. While the benefits of such endeavours are increasingly discussed (Glover et al. 2016), we rarely acknowledge their effects. In this short piece of writing we are interested in the ways in which one globalising move — the appointment of the ‘visiting academic’ —…

// DEMANDers in Lancaster were able to experience first hand the effects of flooding caused by Storm Desmond, that left 55,000 homes without power in December 2015. Below are some reflections of experiences from the week of 5th - 12th December 2015 written by Lancaster DEMANDers. There is also a short film "What is going on?" about demand and disruption during the power cut and a report…