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I am interested in the Macro scale and the macro effects evident at a city-scale level. I remember visiting New Orleans in 2016 and vividly remember seeing several signs with a large 'No' symbol drawn and the text  "neighbors not tourists" printed on the sign. Recently, as part of my research into New Orleans, I stumbled on this piece by the Guardian on how short-term rentals through platforms such as Airbnb are leading to gentrification in New Orleans. Highlighted in the article is how several Airbnb hosts do not reside on the listed premises. I remember the place we stayed, as we were a large party, having a 617 prefix number.  The prefix stood out as I knew the code 617 represented Boston and was curious what someone with ties to Boston doing in New Orleans as a host. In a similar vein, the article also highlights the problem of absentee hosts, hosts who acquire property for the sole purpose of setting up the property as an Airbnb site.

To tackle the problem, one councilwoman passed a law that required any Airbnb hosts in residential zones to have a homestead exemption verifying they live on site. In this case, a city-wide measure was taken and passed into law affecting the micro. It is common to have one host having several properties in different residential areas in New Orleans. From a technical standpoint, it could be viewed that Airbnb as technology is developed and presented as a scalable product. With no limits to reproducibility. Meanwhile, real-life discontinuities exist in the form of such homestead laws. It is impossible to live in more than one homestead at the same time. In other words, the concept of the human is not scalable.
Likewise, neither is cultural heritage. The city of New Orleans positions its self as a city with great cultural heritage. It is through this heritage that they seek to draw more and more tourists. How do cities think of scaling up successful initiatives and how do they navigate the political, social, ecological, or economic entanglements. At what point is downscaling necessary? Is culture scalable?

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/13/new-orleans-airbnb-trem…

I am currently a Ph.D. student interested in exploring the entanglements of scale, especially in the context of environmental sensing.  My primary research seeks to engage in discourse around the value of scalability that is presented as inherent in computation. While the term scale-up is almost synonymous with computation, sustainability; on the other hand, is known as a problem of scale. Take for example, the discourse on climate change where the actions required to combat climate change requires interventions at different scales. In this context, demanding changes at individual scales while no corresponding changes happen at larger scales would not yield much.

In looking at New Orleans, I came across a video on IoT cameras developed by Cisco, the networking giant. What struck me other than the apparent rise of surveillance capitalism was the narrative of one of the police officers highlighted in the video. The officer mentions that it is not feasible for the city to place police officers on every corner. In the context of scale, the police officer is implying that cameras are useful as they extend the police officer's ability to surveil the city. In other words, cameras and the networks help scale up the police officer, making it possible for them to cover a larger scale than before.

One of the police officers, in the video, also mentions that New Orleans is a tourist and hospitable town. Which brings up the question at any given period, what scale of visitors can New Orleans support without stretching the city's resources? Several other cities in the world have made efforts to limit visitors, in order not stretch city resources. The recent crisis at Mount Everest is an excellent example of what happens when resources are stretched to accommodate the increasing number of local visitors. How could something of this nature similarly impact New Orleans?

At the communication center where the video feed is analyzed, the IT manager provides reasons as to why they chose Cisco as their vendor. One of the reasons he gives was that the system is easily expandable, allowing the ability to scale out/up the network.

The article focuses on the inherent necessity for emergency response to include community education, risk assessment, and premade policies that designate decision making authority in the event of a disaster, while also acknowledging the inherent unpredictability of emergencies that require flexible response plans. Emphasis is placed on the need for rapid response, and the importance of safeguarding expertise through training and records. 

The article provides statistics and excerpts of interviews to support its analysis of the narrative of illness. There are also several quotes from other works that analyze story and narrative to support the claims of the importance of emotion as a method of sharing the plot.

Data collected from a study done in Baltimore in the 1990’s, including statistics and observations is used to support the main argument. The methods used in Haiti and Rwanda as well as the results from implementing those methods are also used as examples for the claim that social conditions greatly impact disease susceptibility.

The main argument of the article is that the attempt to depoliticize sexual violence has a negative effect on the ability for the victims of sexual violence to receive humanitarian aid and prevents the recognition of all manifestations of this type of violence.

“There is no such thing as being “too secure.” Living with risk, by contrast, acknowledges a more complex calculus. It requires new forms of political and ethical reasoning that take into account questions that are often only implicit in discussions of biosecurity interventions.” (Lakoff 28)

“On the one hand, they examine the different political and normative frameworks through which the problem of biosecurity is approached: national defense, public health, and humanitarianism, for example. On the other hand, they examine the styles of reasoning through which uncertain threats to health are transformed into risks that can be known and acted upon” (Lakoff 12)

“These initiatives build on a growing perception among diverse actors—life scientists and public health officials, policymakers and security analysts—that new biological threats challenge existing ways of understanding and managing collective health and security. From the vantage point of such actors, the global scale of these threats crosses and confounds the boundaries of existing regulatory jurisdictions. Moreover, their pathogenicity and mutability pushes the limits of current technical capacities to detect and treat disease” (Lakoff 8)

As many of these systems are relatively new, and not particularly effective, there appears not to be other apps modeled off of these systems. The only similarities are within the apps themselves, suggesting that the company We-Consent developing many of these apps is using a similar format for each of them.

The family followed during most of the film was able to get several members out of Liberia during the Ebola crisis, I was under the impression that travel across the border of affected nations was prohibited. The CDC webpage was able to confirm that travel bans were imposed to and from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis. Travel to and from these places was only permitted for health officials and aid worked, and required a 21 day quarantine upon returning to the US. However, several cases in surrounding countries were reported and it is known that people would first travel to a different country before attempting to fly to the United States.

I was also interested in how health care workers and emergency responders kept themselves safe while working with such a dangerous virus, the CDC webpage was also able to clarify the PPE used when dealing with suspected or confirmed cases of Ebola, including gloves, gowns, respiratory protection and boots. Protocols also exist for training responders in the proper methods of donning and doffing PPE to protect themselves.

As a portion of the film focused on the public outrage concerning the quarantine, I read an article “Encouraging Compliance with Quarantine: A Proposal to Provide Job Security an Income Replacement” by Mark A. Rothstein which explains in greater detail the effectiveness but also challenges posed by a quarantine, and how this directly effects the infected and uninfected individuals inside.

This policy was created in response to attacks against non-police first responders, the effort to enable the responders to carry firearms was in part motivated by a 911 call where the caller faked a medical emergency and then took the firefighters hostage when they arrived. He later stated that he had chosen a medical emergency because he knew they wouldn’t be armed. This, and other incidents, began to affect patient care as paramedics no longer felt safe entering buildings without police.