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Upgrading Ourselves to Death
By Felix Behr
Staff Writer
2/5/2019
Outside my window, behind the pink magnolia blossoms, I can see both the corner of the street and a telephone pole. The street and telephone lines wind their way out of sight and demarcate the boundaries of society like tunnels in an anthill.
But like an anthill, the structure is so totalizing that its full shape is largely invisible to its inhabitants. We talk about the internet as something like an all-pervasive ether. It acts on a purely metaphysical plane. The cloud, however, is as concrete as that street or those telephone lines. Data centers house the machinery that stores, processes, and distributes the data that fuels our digital infrastructure. You can see a collection of such centers on this map or this one, which reveal the centers that run Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure. The internet’s ethereal nature is grounded in these industrial-looking buildings. If it weren’t for the fences, you could touch them.
Our wireless connection’s physical base is due for an upgrade, leaping from the old 4G to the much-anticipated 5G. 5G is the marketing name for the fifth generation of wireless technology or “mobile internet connectivity” — the way devices like your cell phone or your computer speak to other things. Some people have estimated that 5G could potentially be 20 or even 100 times faster than our current 4G-based systems. 5G promises faster speeds, less lag, and more traffic, increasing our network’s download speed, streaming, and general processing.
As with every new technology, the future is renewed, repackaged, and resold. “1G gave us mobile phones and 2G brought text messaging,” Let’s 5G!, a Verizon-led advocacy group, raves, “3G put the internet in our pockets and 4G made it fast enough for mobile apps. But 5G isn’t just the next G in your phone — it’s something bigger.” Fair enough, Verizon has stock to sell. However, consider how each generation has changed the world. Look at the now nearly ubiquitous presence of mobile apps, for example, and the ways they have already altered our societies. The vague future Let’s 5G proclaims definitely sounds exciting.
Three of the biggest revolutions 5G evangelists prophesy involve the Internet of Things, Virtual Reality, and driverless cars. The cars need 5G’s increased processing speed to react immediately to ever-changing road conditions. Virtual and augmented reality requires the power it promises to create high definition illusions. The Internet of Things, a network of physical devices that all connect to each other via the internet, can only function on the stronger network. These futuristic technologies are severely limited in our present. What’s holding them back is not the lack of a conceptual framework but of a sufficiently powerful infrastructure to serve as a springboard. 5G would provide the necessary speed and power for these technologies to reach their full potential.
5G promises a more immersive virtual reality
The future, then, is up for grabs and people are certainly scrambling for it. The major contest is between American corporations like Verizon and AT&T and Huawei, a Chinese company heavily supported by its country’s government, over building the necessary infrastructure in Europe. The US claims that allowing a Chinese company to have such an intimate relationship with Europe’s networks would constitute a security risk. The UN disagrees, suggesting instead that the US is worried about losing its technological supremacy, and the EU has largely ignored the US in this matter. It’s possible the fact that the NSA, the American security agency charged with monitoring suspects and gathering data, has historically maintained back door access points to the data held by American technology companies may have hurt the American argument.
The ways in which laying down 5G in Europe will realign the balance of power between the US and China have dominated the story. But discussion about the actual infrastructure has been relegated to the sidelines of the conversation. This infrastructure is a tactile thing. It will exist in our world. Since 5G will have a place in our environment, we should look for it.
Discussion about the actual infrastructure has been relegated to the sidelines of the conversation.
After all the talk about how different 5G will be, finding it is somewhat anticlimactic. In the States, it’s a small box, antennae, or a small box with antennae sticking out of it. These uninspiring packages of the future are called small cells. If they aren’t exciting to look at — and they aren’t — it’s by design. As Let’s 5G proclaims, small cells are “[d]esigned to blend into the environment, these 5G antennas hide in plain sight on things you never notice — like utility poles and street lamps.” Their purpose is to broadcast the millimeter wave frequency that sets 5G apart from its preceding generations. The millimeter wave frequency is higher, which is why 5G is both stronger and more powerful, but it has a shorter range. To overcome this, small cells, which are low-powered radio nodes, will be placed at regular intervals, integrating them with the preexisting 4G network.
5G boxes mounted on streetlamps (Picture Credit: Let’s 5G)
You may never notice them but their effects are nonetheless present. Whilst 5G enables our technological fantasies, it also increases our exposure to radiation. 5G’s wireless connections work by sending radioactive signals directly between devices, regardless of what’s between them, including us. Due to our reliance on 4G, we are used to the idea that we are irradiated. Yet there is a large body of scholarship on the real, physical risks of living with so much radiation. An Indian study presents evidence of genetic damage caused by mobile phone usage from 4G and earlier, weaker generations. As we have repeatedly seen, though, 5G is expected to be much more powerful. In a paper reviewing the vast literature on the health risks of 5G, Dr Martin Pall, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Basic Medical Sciences at Washington State University, notes that 5G could affect our nervous and hormonal systems, lower both male and female fertility, and attack our cells to cause cancer. Our driverless cars, our virtual reality, our Internet of Things — in short, our future — could be inescapably poisonous to us.
Our driverless cars, our virtual reality, our Internet of Things — in short, our future — could be inescapably poisonous to us.
But surely, some may say, the various companies behind the 5G rollout have conducted thorough and extensive tests to ensure that the technology is safe. When I asked Let’s 5G! about the system’s possible risks, it responded:
“All equipment used for 5G must comply with federal safety standards. Those standards have wide safety margins and are designed to protect everyone, including children. Everyday exposure to the radio frequency energy from 5G small cells will be well within those safety limits, and is comparable to exposure from products such as baby monitors, Wi-Fi routers, and Bluetooth devices.”
However, a hearing in February held by the US Senate’s Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee on the future of 5G found otherwise. Neither the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) or the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), the two agencies responsible for finding out if a cell phone is safe to use, had conducted any research into the matter, opting instead to give the companies who would profit from the implementation of 5G free rein to implement it as they see fit. “So,” Senator Richard Blumenthal concluded, “there really is no research ongoing. We’re kind of flying blind here, as far as health and safety is concerned.” This is five months after the FCC had granted communication service providers, like Verizon, the right to overrule local governments and access public property. Presumably, the future can’t wait for either knowledge or consent.
Presumably, the future can’t wait for either knowledge or consent.
Europe’s situation is hardly better. 180 European scientists signed a petition recommending a moratorium on the roll-out of 5G. They invoked the precautionary principle that whenever there is “unacceptable harm that is scientifically plausible but uncertain, actions shall be taken to avoid or diminish that harm.” The EU responded, and as the squabble between the US and Huawei shows, it politely declined, saying that it considered enacting the precautionary principle to be “too drastic.” This led Rainer Nyberg, the main person behind the petition, to create 5G Appeal, which has collected a further 49 signatures since the original petition and tracks news on the progress of 5G. There was some success in halting the blind rush into 5G in Brussels and San Rafael in California, but there remains no coherent or overarching movement.
The story changes very little as we move to Asia. China is spearheading the adoption of 5G and, according to the analyst firm Deloitte, has outspent the US by about $24 billion. Huawei has set out to use Thailand as a test site for 5G. And in April, both the US and South Korea officially launched the commercial use of 5G, though widespread practical use will still take a few years. 5G is happening. It would be easier to stop time than any of these countries’ pushes into the future.
There are good reasons for a moratorium. First, if we hitch our societies to new digital infrastructure, getting them off it would be extremely difficult. Trying to imagine our current lives without the internet or cellphones, for example, brings us into the realm of post-apocalyptic science fiction. To riff off of Fredric Jameson, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of the internet. The second is that it’s easier to prevent health issues than to cure them. If we could find a way of running a similar technology without frying ourselves, that would be preferable.
If we could find a way of running a similar technology without frying ourselves, that would be preferable.
This is the point Dr Timothy Schoechle, a Senior Research Fellow at the US National Institute for Science, Law, and Public Policy, makes in his paper Re-Inventing Wires: The Future of Landlines and Networks. Instead of wireless networks, we should use wired ones as the basis of our infrastructure.
The paper gives an incredibly in-depth exploration of the economic and political issues around America’s wireless and wired landscapes. The preference for small cell, wireless networks comes down to — as it always does — making it as cheap as possible with the minimum amount of regulation regardless of the possible health risks or actual long term efficiency. Wireless’ selling point is that we can have mobile phones and laptops that don’t have to be hooked into a physical structure, like a landline. Wires are indeed more expensive and cumbersome, but they’re faster, deal with less interference, and don’t send radiating microwaves everywhere. Instead of using a radio frequency to send data, wires physically transport data at a higher frequency. A hybrid system in which wireless technology acts as a supplement to a wire-based infrastructure would be the most realistic ideal. What the US currently has is a hybrid system in which wired connections occasionally supplement wireless ones.
A physical infrastructure consisting of lines, cables, and wires is not the future Verizon or Huawei sell. While more efficient, the marketing of these telecommunication companies has caused wires and other obviously physical connections to reek of the past. Perhaps it’s because heavily regulated infrastructure cannot be upgraded, repackaged, and resold every ten years as the new future. Guiding the currents of the future so that they won’t wash away important things in the present, like one’s well-being, is not the same as damming them. But the prophets of 5G have done their best to strangle any other timeline. Barring an unprecedentedly dramatic regulatory response, our course seems set.