EMAP artists Caroline Sinders and Trammell Hudson present their project The Potato Internet, an experimental small-scale social network to envision the internet in times of climate emergency and the global energy crisis during a workshop at m-cult. The workshop discussion addressed key issues of small-scale networks - governance, codes of conduct and safety - based on Carline Sinders´ collaborative project Feminist Data Set.

When imagining alternatives for today’s toxic and extractivist online world, the common criticism often comes down to: "but they don’t scale up". But what if the future of the internet is all about scaling down?

In Potato Internet, the small scale allows the artists to build a functioning social network from scratch, rethinking all layers of the system, from hardware to protocols and governance. An 'anti-scale' network can be framed in a local context and endorse slow communication.
Potato Internet testing

For the physical framework, the artists experiment with potatoes as a source of energy, and with e-waste and other recycled materials for the interface. The governance of the network, its safety, equity and codes of conduct draw on Sinders' work on the Feminist Data Set.

Potato Internet will be presented as an installation designed to fit in a suitcase.