Our Founding Node is a first step in onboarding contributors at scale to the DADI Edge network. Every recipient of the device will help lay the foundations of a new, fairer internet – and we chose to manufacture something special for this first wave as a thank you to our earliest supporters.

That this represents a phase early in the gestation of the network helped inform the design of the Founding Node. It is conceived to evoke the feeling of functional laboratory equipment, not just in the colour of materials used but that the bulk of the product is made up of borosilicate glass – the same as you’ll find standing above Bunsen burners in chemistry labs the world over. This grade of glass has shock and heat resistant properties to aid durability.

It is also transparent because we want people to see the inner workings, and with it what the network actually is, rather than veiling our network with decorative language like ‘cloud’. Traditional cloud services like to conjure an image of floating data all around us – masking the reality of behemoth warehouses with racks of servers.

DADI is different, it will be a larger network of smaller devices dotted around your local towns in homes and offices (the bulk of which will already have a life as a laptop or desktop machine giving up spare capacity) and the Founding Node articulates this by making obvious its heart – a straightforward, standard Raspberry Pi 3b.

Our network is designed to run on everyday devices, but the Founding Node isn’t something you’ll want to hide in a cupboard. The objects we choose to surround ourselves with have either an active or passive purpose – a picture on the wall brings us joy even though it’s passive whereas a stove has a functional purpose that requires active involvement (or your dinner gets burned). We’re exploring the intersection between these boundaries.

The glass is hand-blown and each unit will vary slightly as a result, depending on things such as where the material was held during the process. Apart from being a unique design feature, this also links nicely with the angled shape to the silicone lid, reminiscent of the cork stoppers seen on some laboratory glassware.