critical infrastructure lab

bi- weekly tuesday session 16:00 – 17:00 cest/cet* (once every two weeks)
facilitated by niels@criticalinfralab.net, fieke@criticalinfralab.net, maxigas@criticalinfralab.net

meet up here (just show up, no prior notification is needed): https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/6365963924
take notes here: https://pad.criticalinfralab.net/unz6CPM9SpieqIlkXf-Oq
sign up for the mailinglist here (don’t forget to click the link in the confirmation email):
https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/infrastructure-readinggroup
and a calendar event (add to your Google calendar or download an .ics file)

We are currently reading:
– Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine by Thomas Dekeyser
– Machine and Sovereignty: For a Planetary Thinking by Yuk Hui

August 4th – Techno-Negative: Introduction – Machine and Sovereignty: Introduction
August 18th – Techno-Negative: Chapter 1 – Machine and Sovereignty: Chapter 1
September 1st – Techno-Negative: Chapter 2 – Machine and Sovereignty: Chapter 2
September 15th – Techno-Negative: Chapter 3 – Machine and Sovereignty: Chapter 3
September 29th – Techno-Negative: Chapter 4 – Machine and Sovereignty: Chapter 4
October 13th – Techno-Negative: Chapter 5 – Machine and Sovereignty: Chapter 5
October 27th – Techno-Negative: Chapter 6 – Machine and Sovereignty: Chapter 6
November 10th – Techno-Negative: Conclusions – Machine and Sovereignty: Chapter 7
November 24th – Machine and Sovereignty: Conclusion

We will be reading:
– The Rulers: Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud by Cecilia Rikap
– No Heavenly Bodies: A History of Satellite Communications Infrastructure by Christine E. Evans and Lars Lundgren

December 8th – The Rulers: Introduction (Who Rules?) – No Heavenly Bodies: Introduction
December 22nd – The Rulers: Part I (Intellectual Monopolies) – No Heavenly Bodies: Chapter 1 (Towers in the Sky)
January 5th – The Rulers: Part II (Planning Innovation) – No Heavenly Bodies: Chapter 2 (Promising Liveness)
January 19th – The Rulers: Part III (Corporate Dependencies) – No Heavenly Bodies: Chapter 3 (Intelsat and Intersputnik)
February 2nd – The Rulers: Part IV (Global Turbulence) – No Heavenly Bodies: Chapter 4 (Space Begins on Earth)
February 16th – No Heavenly Bodies: Chapter 5 (Hotlines, Handshakes, and Satellite Earth Stations) and epilogue

If you want to see what we have read before, check the page of the previous infrastructure reading group, and the environment reading group. In this reading group, we have previously read:

– The Low-Carbon Contradiction: Energy Transition, Geopolitics, and the Infrastructural State in Cuba by Gustav Cederlöf
– The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade by Deborah Cowen
– Extraction: The frontiers of green capitalism by Thea Riofrancos
– Cybernetic Circulation Complex: Big Tech and Planetary Crisis by Nick Dyer-Witheford & Alessandra Mularoni

Books we want to read:
– Energy at the End of the World by Laura Watts
– Climate Change as Class War by Matthew T. Huber
– The Infrastructural South by Jonathan Silver
– How the World Made the West by Josephine Quinn
– The Nutmeg’s Curse by Amitav Ghosh
– Grounding the Cloud by Ali Fard

* We use CEST between the last Sunday of March until the last Sunday of October, then we switch back to CET.