Working as a team, we came up with the idea of taking a look under the covers of our devices and discovered the usefulness of PCB cards.

Team: Joey van Gessel, NIcoletta Mannella

The year 2049 scenario: Living in Cartopia

"I was able to unlock 15 minutes of connection in the internet cafe I'm now typing this story in. I don’t have more time on my card, so I keep it short. I just discovered how good the year 2021 in the “2021” museum was. I only had one acces-exhibition-token on my card but it was totally worth it. So weird I’m now using a card that is made from technological advanced devices from the past, but this is the new reality. It’s all about PCB and its metals... I wish I could be in one of the “w-area”, then I wouldn’t be limited with my cards. Yes, I have more cards ... Another challenge I have is to store my cards in an organised way so I can quickly find them back. I have some inventory on my old phone but sometimes I don’t have enough value on a card to charge it. Every month they load a new amount of energy onto our cards, which we then have to divide up for ourselves. That's not so easy, because four weeks is a long time, and sometimes I use more than that when I have to talk to my contacts from the underground. But I have learned to be very economical with my card. The phone is not as convenient as before as well, I cannot even call sometimes since the limited satellites need to be in the right location at the right moment. But if I’m lucky there is a wired phone booth. But yet again, I need a card to enable it. And of course, they are rare... Thanks to the w-area... I hate that all the resources are in their hands. I didn't use to be so rebellious, I accepted what the new norm was, but as time went on I started to think more about who was in charge and also thought about earlier times when people were setting resolutions together. My contacts in the Non Area also tell me many such stories and thus have made me aware of the abuses that currently prevail. Last week something stole one card from me, I still don’t know how, but I guess one of the resistance groups used a magnet drone to quickly grab it from me. If that’s the case, I’m not even mad. I hope the groups will succeed in fighting the w-area someday.
Oh uhm... I have to go, but I don’t know for sure since the clock here is missing a PCB. However, I'm going, but here is some advice for you: save and cherish the technology you still have ... it should be your pension!"

Reflection

The majority of people no longer even realize how much time they spend with technology. Our daily lives (especially in Corona and Lockdown times) consist of video conferencing, virtual phone calls, social media, and the occasional video game. We take all of this for granted. We think that technology will just keep evolving, that there will be new innovative digital solutions to problems, forgetting all that is needed to make it happen. Most people think that we will always have enough resources to build new technology, such as PCB, but with this object, around which we have spun a future scenario, we realize recycling is eventually necessary for more things than we think. We now have a lot of freedom with all our devices and hardly think about the data and power consumption we cause every day. It is actually crazy that we have a PCB card in almost every piece of technology. In the meanwhile, as users, we don’t really know how they work. How are we ever going to recycle ourselves if we don’t know this? Should this be basic education? Compare it to changing a tire on a car, most people even don’t know how to do this... With PCB cards the problem is even bigger, while we use them way more.

So, Why did they end up in the way they are? What led to using the PCB cards?

It starts with a global recession by collapsing the unbalanced trade market. However, big tech companies such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook try to rebalance the economic situation again by investing rapidly in technology research centers. This does not turn out in a good way, since the middle-class people don’t have enough money to buy the new technology and only the rich people can. This enhances the big difference between people who malfunctions to the money currency. However, one thing still is the same: the big need for technology in all kinds of social groups.

There was a vote on whether to advance technology because there were controversial opinions about it and the majority of people voted to stop advancing technology until further notice. Against the law, some people then kept technology anyway, but with the

network getting worse and slower, people got used to not using technology as much. But that doesn't mean it has become less important. However, citizens discovered they still need technology to have some efficiency in their lives. There had to be some kind of compromise between having totally no technology and the rich people having it all. The compromise became PCB cards because they were so widely available in all different levels of technology. Slowly they began to integrate into people's simple homes as a way to keep wear and tear on electricity and water under control.

Therefore, the hundred (or fifty?) richest people from each country agree to provide for the middle class to some extent and introduce the PCB card system. By working closely with a few scientists, they eventually manage to extract some PCB cards for testing from large technical devices and deploy them in a few test households. At this time, each test subject received a PCB card that can unlock the various devices that had high power consumption. At first, most people had a hard time getting used to the system, but soon a sort of routine set in, as is often the case with new things and new routines - people get used to everything. A few rebels were publicly muzzled by new laws and banished to industrial areas away from real life. This area is now called the Non Area, which means it is the section of people who cannot or will not participate in normal life, are criminals, or work underground. Not many people from the working class stray there.

Since the new system quickly proved to be sustainable, power-saving, and efficient, soon even the last doubters were convinced that everything was better this way and everyone could pursue their new professions, which were important for society, in peace. Nevertheless, there are still some people who work underground, are spies, or try to get more PCB cards through connections to the Rich Area. This network of criminality is often very opaque and hard to catch the really powerful ones. That's probably how it was with the Mafia in the past, I've been told.

We didn’t design an object that suggested a preferred future, but more a doom-scenario where things go wrong. Maybe a preferred future object would be nicer to create since this gives a more guiding vision. To help prevent this object from becoming reality, we should start recycling PCB cards today. A PCB explainer website/campaign and recycle bags + points could be a good start. On top of that, we believe it is important to create some kind of awareness about data and energy consumption because most people don't have that. If you think about what you could design first thing tomorrow, it might be a technical device that doesn't just show us the shell. Could it become a trend to design a see-through back so people can get a sense of what's inside a device?