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data/planet/anil/presenting-our-ecology-of-the-internet-ideas-at-aarhus-2025.md

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+---
+title: Presenting our Ecology of the Internet ideas at Aarhus 2025
+description:
+url: https://anil.recoil.org/notes/ecology-at-aarhus
+date: 2025-08-22T00:00:00-00:00
+preview_image:
+authors:
+- Anil Madhavapeddy
+source:
+ignore:
+---
+
+<p>That's a wrap for the next decade with <a href="https://aarhus2025.org/">Aarhus 2025</a>,
+where I presented our paper on "<a href="https://anil.recoil.org/papers/2025-internet-ecology">Steps towards an Ecology for the Internet</a>".
+I was a little unsure about how to approach the presentation, largely because
+the ideas seem a little crazy if they'd been proposed even a year ago! Luckily
+my co-authors strengthened my spine with encouragement and gin,
+and the event was tremendous fun packed with useful insights.</p>
+<p>Our key observation is that the Internet is dangerously <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_ossification">ossifying</a> into monocultures
+at multiple levels. Inspired by wild ecosystems, we're proposing mixing in more <a href="https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&amp;rls=en&amp;q=natural%20selection&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;oe=UTF-8">natural
+selection</a>
+into edge deployments by using AI code models to mutate end-hosts and tailor
+them to their environment. Generative AI is notoriously
+<a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.1201/9781003440260/ai-roman-yampolskiy">unpredictable</a>,
+which turns out to be a useful property if you actually want more local
+software diversity! For example, this lets us cook up "antibotty" networks that
+fight back against global viruses via locally adapted vigilantes (antibodies).</p>
+<p><a href="https://anil.recoil.org/slides/2025-internet-ecology.html"> </a></p><figure class="image-center"><a href="https://anil.recoil.org/slides/2025-internet-ecology.html"><img src="https://anil.recoil.org/images/aarhus-1.webp" alt="" title="" loading="lazy" srcset="/images/aarhus-1.1024.webp 1024w,/images/aarhus-1.1280.webp 1280w,/images/aarhus-1.1440.webp 1440w,/images/aarhus-1.1600.webp 1600w,/images/aarhus-1.1920.webp 1920w,/images/aarhus-1.320.webp 320w,/images/aarhus-1.480.webp 480w,/images/aarhus-1.640.webp 640w,/images/aarhus-1.768.webp 768w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 33vw" class="content-image"><figcaption></figcaption></a></figure><a href="https://anil.recoil.org/slides/2025-internet-ecology.html"> </a><p></p>
+<p>Beyond just making thing more resilient, injecting more software diversity gives
+us the hooks to make computers in our environment do <em>what we actually want
+them to</em>.
+To quote Mark Weiser, "<a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/174800.174801">the world is not a desktop</a>", and computers
+should be so ubiquitously blended into our day-to-day lives that they are
+<a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/192426.192428">invisible</a> to the user.  We're
+getting further away from that dream every day with the monotony of the FAANG
+software monocultures, and a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet">wild west of botnets</a>
+sweeping through billions of devices.</p>
+<p>Since this conference only happens once a decade, I put myself in the right mindframe by reading through my old ideas and seeing how they had aged.
+I was struck by how much <a href="https://anil.recoil.org/papers/2015-aarhus-databox">Databox</a> (2015), <a href="https://anil.recoil.org/papers/2011-icdcn-droplets">Droplets</a> (2011) and
+<a href="https://anil.recoil.org/notes/yurts-for-digital-nomads">Digital Yurts</a> (2009) all stood up surprisingly well<sup><a href="https://anil.recoil.org/news.xml#fn-1" role="doc-noteref" class="fn-label">[1]</a></sup> in 2025.
+This time around, we have a fresh edge with the rise of coding models and a relative glut of edge computation. The question is how to harness these new technologies for the health of the Internet and not yet more central lockin.</p>
+<p></p><figure class="image-center"><img src="https://anil.recoil.org/images/aarhus-4.webp" alt="The crowd was centred around the SIGCHI community and very engaged" title="The crowd was centred around the SIGCHI community and very engaged" loading="lazy" srcset="/images/aarhus-4.1024.webp 1024w,/images/aarhus-4.1280.webp 1280w,/images/aarhus-4.1440.webp 1440w,/images/aarhus-4.1600.webp 1600w,/images/aarhus-4.1920.webp 1920w,/images/aarhus-4.2560.webp 2560w,/images/aarhus-4.320.webp 320w,/images/aarhus-4.3840.webp 3840w,/images/aarhus-4.480.webp 480w,/images/aarhus-4.640.webp 640w,/images/aarhus-4.768.webp 768w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 33vw" class="content-image"><figcaption>The crowd was centred around the SIGCHI community and very engaged</figcaption></figure><p></p>
+<h2><a href="https://anil.recoil.org/news.xml#discussions-with-the-audience" class="anchor" aria-hidden="true"></a>Discussions with the audience</h2>
+<p>The talks were arranged in a panel with three other great speakers, who discussed crises through the lenses <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3744169.3744176">urban gardening</a>, <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3744169.3744179">computing supply chains</a> and <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3744169.3744178">two-loops models of change</a>. There were some thought-provoking questions from the audience!</p>
+<p>Firstly, is framing these questions as a "crisis" just <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/13/4/69">saturating</a> us with a constant bombardment of problems we need to react to? Should we be building more (emotionally and systemically) sustainable platforms for engendering change? I certainly agreed with this, but I don't yet have a clear sense of what this means, beyond finding <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/">Our World In Data</a> an inspiration of how fun data exploration can be.</p>
+<p>A couple of things I need to follow up on reading:</p>
+<ul>
+<li><a href="https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1773078/FULLTEXT01.pdf">Computing as Ecocide</a> was a paper at the <a href="https://computingwithinlimits.org/2025/">LIMITS</a> workshop, which I hadn't heard off before. This seems like a complement to <a href="https://conf.researchr.org/home/icfp-splash-2025/propl-2025">PROPL</a> coming up in October.</li>
+<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Sloan">Robin Sloan</a> is an author who combines old and new tech in fun ways.</li>
+<li>Approaches to directly <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9830112">deal with "eco-anxiety"</a> while teaching sustainability.</li>
+</ul>
+<p></p><figure class="image-center"><img src="https://anil.recoil.org/images/aarhus-5.webp" alt="Waving to the conference audience from stage!" title="Waving to the conference audience from stage!" loading="lazy" srcset="/images/aarhus-5.1024.webp 1024w,/images/aarhus-5.1280.webp 1280w,/images/aarhus-5.1440.webp 1440w,/images/aarhus-5.1600.webp 1600w,/images/aarhus-5.1920.webp 1920w,/images/aarhus-5.2560.webp 2560w,/images/aarhus-5.320.webp 320w,/images/aarhus-5.3840.webp 3840w,/images/aarhus-5.480.webp 480w,/images/aarhus-5.640.webp 640w,/images/aarhus-5.768.webp 768w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 33vw" class="content-image"><figcaption>Waving to the conference audience from stage!</figcaption></figure><p></p>
+<h3><a href="https://anil.recoil.org/news.xml#inversely-proportional-voting" class="anchor" aria-hidden="true"></a>Inversely proportional voting</h3>
+<p>The stage discussion then veered into the role of lifecycles in these cultural
+systems. An audience member asked about the role of biological mutualism and
+cooperation in any future digital framework, and I pointed out
+<a href="https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2014/09/20/impalas-parasites-and-the-prisoners-dilemma/">some</a>
+<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08614-x">examples</a> from our paper
+about how cooperative ensembles in nature can be very stable, but also do not
+have to last forever. When applying this "nihil aeternum est" principle to
+human systems, how sacrosanct are concepts like "democracy" as we move forward?
+If our views on these institutions remain unchanging, then they will also
+become brittle and collapse as the context in which they operate changes into a hot
+crowded world mired in <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainability/announcements/call-for-papers/polycrisis-in-the-anthropocene">polycrises</a>.</p>
+<p>This let me bring out an idea I've been <a href="https://anil.recoil.org/notes/cambridge-green-blue">ruminating</a> on for a while. While the principles of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffrage">equal suffrage</a> are vital, one dimension where we could relax it is for <em>intergenerational</em> representation. One issue with taking political decisions for the long-term is that wealth pools with the old, who have far less to gain from long-term thinking than the young<sup><a href="https://anil.recoil.org/news.xml#fn-2" role="doc-noteref" class="fn-label">[2]</a></sup> voters. So why are the young so underrepresented? Imagine a completely made up voting system that looked like this:</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p>A voting system assigns each individual a number of votes inversely
+proportional to their age. An 18-year old will have the maximum number of
+votes, and they gradually degrade until anyone age 70 or higher gets just one
+vote. The number of votes decay rapidly with age, so that every year the new
+18-year old cohort will control (say) 40% of the total vote. This sort of
+system ensures that the older generations (where wealth pools) must educate
+the newly minted voters every year, or risk losing control of their agendas.
+<cite>-- Anil's entirely made up voting system</cite></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>I've found some variations of the theme, like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeny_voting">Demeny voting</a> that gives parents a proxy
+vote for their children or even cases for <a href="https://profs-polisci.mcgill.ca/muniz/intergen/Van%20Parijs%20-%20Disenfranchisement%20of%20the%20elderly.pdf">disenfranchisement of the elderly</a>.
+But neither of these quite capture what I have in mind, which is to build
+<em>intergenerational education</em> firmly into how our society operates. If 40% of
+the entire voting block appears newly every year, then education on civic
+matters need to happen like clockwork and be incorporated into our curriculums.</p>
+<p>But of course, there are huge barriers to trying out these experiments in civic
+society. But there are no such barriers to running these experiments in
+microcosms of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/governing-the-commons/7AB7AE11BADA84409C34815CC288CD79">common pool
+resources</a>
+or even on digital systems. So after these fascinating conversations
+at the conference, I'm going to think about the <a href="https://anil.recoil.org/notes/cambridge-green-blue">Cambridge Green Blue</a> and apply it there.</p>
+<p></p><figure class="image-center"><img src="https://anil.recoil.org/images/aarhus-3.webp" alt="The students at Aarhus are definitely a welcoming bunch!" title="The students at Aarhus are definitely a welcoming bunch!" loading="lazy" srcset="/images/aarhus-3.1024.webp 1024w,/images/aarhus-3.1280.webp 1280w,/images/aarhus-3.1440.webp 1440w,/images/aarhus-3.1600.webp 1600w,/images/aarhus-3.1920.webp 1920w,/images/aarhus-3.2560.webp 2560w,/images/aarhus-3.320.webp 320w,/images/aarhus-3.3840.webp 3840w,/images/aarhus-3.480.webp 480w,/images/aarhus-3.640.webp 640w,/images/aarhus-3.768.webp 768w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 33vw" class="content-image"><figcaption>The students at Aarhus are definitely a welcoming bunch!</figcaption></figure><p></p>
+<h3><a href="https://anil.recoil.org/news.xml#self-hosting-is-really-far-behind" class="anchor" aria-hidden="true"></a>Self hosting is really far behind</h3>
+<p>I was also struck by how far behind self-hosting is, even among an audience
+that should be heavily in favour of it. I think my talk was one of only a few
+that mentioned BlueSky and the Fediverse, and alternative communication
+mechanisms. I also demoed Claude in a corner to show how it could help <a href="https://www.tunbury.org/2025/07/25/build-analysis/">manage
+infrastructure</a> that would
+ordinarily take a sysadmin, but could now be reasonably handled by a non-expert
+(with care!).</p>
+<p>One of the attendees commented to me afterwards that they remembered the
+<a href="https://anil.recoil.org/papers/2015-aarhus-databox">Databox</a> talk from a decade ago, and wondered why it
+hadn't taken off. Maybe now is the time for <a href="https://ryan.freumh.org" class="contact">Ryan Gibb</a>'s work on <a href="https://ryan.freumh.org/eilean.html">digital
+islands</a> to hit the mainstream!
+They've certainly never been needed more than now; I am deeply glad to
+see my colleagues like <a href="https://jonmsterling.com" class="contact">Jon Sterling</a> also <a href="https://www.jonmsterling.com/2025-W35/index.xml">working on solutions</a>
+in this space.</p>
+<h3><a href="https://anil.recoil.org/news.xml#presenting-in-slipshow" class="anchor" aria-hidden="true"></a>Presenting in Slipshow</h3>
+<p>In the spirit of self-hosting, I also used the great new
+<a href="https://github.com/panglesd/slipshow">Slipshow</a> tool (that uses
+<a href="https://github.com/ocsigen/js_of_ocaml"><code>js_of_ocaml</code></a>) to write the
+presentation. Slipshow lets the presentation be <a href="https://tangled.sh/@anil.recoil.org/aarhus25-ecology-talk/blob/main/aarhus.md?code=true">written in
+Markdown</a>,
+and I used Claude Code to handle all the styling for me. The whole presentation
+took about an hour to put together, and can be <a href="https://anil.recoil.org/slides/2025-internet-ecology.html">viewed
+standalone</a> as a single web page as it
+inlines all the assets.</p>
+<p>Using HTML/JS/CSS for talks is really convenient, so I'm sold on using Slipshow
+for my upcoming presentations this year! It's also excellent to be using
+<code>js_of_ocaml</code>. I think the only thing on my "wishlist" is to be able to run a
+headless browser and output PDF snapshots of each of the slips. I'm also not
+yet sure how my 100MB videos will encode, but I'll figure that out ahead of my
+next talk (in the Royal Society at the start of September to the Austrian
+government). The author of the software, <a href="https://github.com/panglesd">Paul-Elliot</a> also
+kindly reached out to get feedback, and I was really pleased to see his work
+was supported by the <a href="https://nlnet.nl/commonsfund/">NGI Commons Fund</a>!</p>
+<p></p><figure class="image-center"><img src="https://anil.recoil.org/images/aarhus-8.webp" alt="Slipshow looked great on the giant presentation screen" title="Slipshow looked great on the giant presentation screen" loading="lazy" srcset="/images/aarhus-8.1024.webp 1024w,/images/aarhus-8.1280.webp 1280w,/images/aarhus-8.1440.webp 1440w,/images/aarhus-8.1600.webp 1600w,/images/aarhus-8.1920.webp 1920w,/images/aarhus-8.2560.webp 2560w,/images/aarhus-8.320.webp 320w,/images/aarhus-8.480.webp 480w,/images/aarhus-8.640.webp 640w,/images/aarhus-8.768.webp 768w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 33vw" class="content-image"><figcaption>Slipshow looked great on the giant presentation screen</figcaption></figure><p></p>
+<h2><a href="https://anil.recoil.org/news.xml#the-city-of-aarhus" class="anchor" aria-hidden="true"></a>The city of Aarhus</h2>
+<p>Aarhus is also a spiritual twin city to Cambridge. It was a gorgeously sunny
+week, with bicycles available everywhere and a lovely Latin quarter to hang out
+in.</p>
+<p></p><figure class="image-center"><img src="https://anil.recoil.org/images/aarhus-2.webp" alt="Hanging at the Salling rooftop garden with Bas Spitters learning about infinite category theory" title="Hanging at the Salling rooftop garden with Bas Spitters learning about infinite category theory" loading="lazy" srcset="/images/aarhus-2.1024.webp 1024w,/images/aarhus-2.1280.webp 1280w,/images/aarhus-2.1440.webp 1440w,/images/aarhus-2.1600.webp 1600w,/images/aarhus-2.1920.webp 1920w,/images/aarhus-2.2560.webp 2560w,/images/aarhus-2.320.webp 320w,/images/aarhus-2.3840.webp 3840w,/images/aarhus-2.480.webp 480w,/images/aarhus-2.640.webp 640w,/images/aarhus-2.768.webp 768w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 33vw" class="content-image"><figcaption>Hanging at the Salling rooftop garden with Bas Spitters learning about infinite category theory</figcaption></figure><p></p>
+<p>The venue itself at Aarhus University was really nice to explore and see what
+the students are up to. Lots of music and creative arts in the same area. When
+I was here last year to present at
+<a href="https://direc.dk/cybersecurity-how-do-we-maintain-trust-in-our-digital-society/">Matchpoints</a>
+we were at the Modern Art museum, and the amount of new building work in the
+city was remarkable to see. There was also a lovely forest park I went for an
+early morning jog in to get some nature!</p>
+<p></p><figure class="image-center"><img src="https://anil.recoil.org/images/aarhus-7.webp" alt="Excellent coffee at Stillers in the Latin quarter" title="Excellent coffee at Stillers in the Latin quarter" loading="lazy" srcset="/images/aarhus-7.1024.webp 1024w,/images/aarhus-7.1280.webp 1280w,/images/aarhus-7.1440.webp 1440w,/images/aarhus-7.1600.webp 1600w,/images/aarhus-7.1920.webp 1920w,/images/aarhus-7.2560.webp 2560w,/images/aarhus-7.320.webp 320w,/images/aarhus-7.3840.webp 3840w,/images/aarhus-7.480.webp 480w,/images/aarhus-7.640.webp 640w,/images/aarhus-7.768.webp 768w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 33vw" class="content-image"><figcaption>Excellent coffee at Stillers in the Latin quarter</figcaption></figure><p></p>
+<section role="doc-endnotes"><ol>
+<li>
+<p>Not coincidentally, most of these ideas were cooked up with <a href="mailto:[email protected]" class="contact">Jon Crowcroft</a> somewhere in the picture at <a href="https://anil.recoil.org/news/2025-internet-ecology-1">a nearby pub</a>.</p>
+<span><a href="https://anil.recoil.org/news.xml#ref-1-fn-1" role="doc-backlink" class="fn-label">↩︎︎</a></span></li><li>
+<p>We used the ideas of discount factors to adjust for impermanence in our <a href="https://anil.recoil.org/papers/2023-ncc-permanence">forest carbon</a> work in Nature Climate Change a few years ago too.</p>
+<span><a href="https://anil.recoil.org/news.xml#ref-1-fn-2" role="doc-backlink" class="fn-label">↩︎︎</a></span></li></ol></section>
+