open reading group infrastructure reading group
bi- weekly tuesday session 16:00 – 17:00 cest/cet* (once every two weeks)
facilitated by niels@criticalinfralab.net
meet up here: https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/6365963924
take notes here: https://pad.criticalinfralab.net/unz6CPM9SpieqIlkXf-Oqg
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
March 18th – European Objects and Lifelines of our Society – Chapter 1
April 1st – European Objects and Lifelines of our Society – Chapter 2
April 15th – European Objects and Lifelines of our Society – Chapter 3
April 29th – European Objects and Lifelines of our Society – Chapter 4
May 13th – European Objects and Lifelines of our Society – Chapter 5
May 27th – European Objects and Lifelines of our Society – Chapter 6
June 10th – European Objects and Lifelines of our Society – Chapter 7
June 24th – European Objects and Lifelines of our Society – Chapter 8 and conclusion
July 8th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Introduction and Chapter 1
July 22nd – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 2
August 5th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 3
August 19th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 4
September 2nd – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 5
September 16th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 6
September 30th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 7
October 14th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 8
October 28th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 9
November 11th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 10
November 25th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 11
December 9th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 12
December 23rd – The Invisible Weapon – Chapters 13, 14, 15
books we still hope to read (someday):
- Becker, Adam – More everything forever
- Carp, Alexander C. – Technological Republic
- Carse, Ashley – Beyond the Big Ditch
- Chabra, Deb – How Infrastructure Works
- Dalrymple, William – The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company.
- Deudney, Daniel – Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity.
- Frieman, Catherine J – An archeology of innovation
- Graham, Stephen, and Marvin, Simon – Splintering Urbanism
- Knox, Hannah, and Penny Harvey – Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise.
- Long, Pamela O. – Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late Sixteenth-Century Rome.
- Negri, Antonio – The End of Sovereignty
- Swenson, Edward – Infrastructures of Religion and Power: Archaeologies of Landscape, Ritual, and Semiotics.t
previous books read in this reading group:
- European Objects – Brice Laurent
- Lifelines of our Society – Dirk van Laak
- The Apple II Age – Laine Nooney
- Telegraphic Imperialism – Deep Kanta Lahiri Choudhury
- The Smartness Mandate – Orit Halpern
- Technology of Empire – Daqing Yang
- News from Germany – Heidi J.S. Tworek
- balkan cyberia – viktor petrov
- how not to network a nation – benjamin peters
- technologies of speculation – sun-ha hong
- the closed world – paul edwards
- four internets – kieron o’hara & wendy hall
- what is wrong with rights – radha d’souza
- digital design and topological control – parisi
- golden age of analog – galloway
- countering the cloud – luke munn
- medium design – keller easterling
- reluctant power – rita zajác
- between truth and power – julie cohen
- the question concerning technology in china – yuk hui
/* We use CEST between the last Sunday of March until the last Sunday of October, then we switch back to CET
open reading group environment reading group
bi- weekly wednesday session 16:00 – 17:00 cet (once every two weeks)
facilitated by fieke@criticalinfralab.net
meet up here: https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/5689070082 | sign up for the mailinglist here and add you reading suggestions here.
Upcoming readings:
– February 26: There are two readings. The draft position paper of the Waag on regenerative infrastructures (see attached) and ‘The compost engineers and sus saberes lentos: a manifest for regenerative technologies‘ by Joana Varon and Lucía Egana
– March 12: Michelle Murphy ‘Afterlife and decolonial relations‘ and ‘Chemical Regimes of Living‘
– March 26: Elemental infrastructures for atmospheric media: On stratospheric variations, value and the commons by D. McCormack and The Elements of Media Studies by N. Starosielski
– April 9: Anne Tsing ‘On Nonscalability: The Living World Is Not Amenable to Precision-Nested Scales‘
– April 23: Towards Planet-Proof Computing: Ten Key Elements EU Data Centre Sustainability Policy Should Take Onboard by Jessica Commins and Kristina Irion. They also wrote a blog post about it.
– May 7: Max Liboiron, Manuel Tironi, and Nerea Calvillo ‘Toxic politics: Acting in a permanently polluted world‘
– May 21: Eva Horn ‘Air as Medium‘ and Elemental infrastructures for atmospheric media: On stratospheric variations, value and the commons by D. McCormack
– June 4: Melody Jue and Rafico Ruiz ‘Saturation: An elemental politics’ (introduction) and Yuriko Furuhata ‘Climatic media: Transpacific experiments in atmospheric control’ (introduction).
previous books and articles read in this reading group:
– pollution is colonialism by Max Liboiron
– myth of green capitalism by Katharina Pistor
– from moore’s law to the carbon law by Daniel Pargman, Aksel Biørn-Hansen, Elina Eriksson, Jarmo Laaksolaht, Markus Robèrt
– solarities; seeking energy justice by After Oil Collective
– the value of a whale by Adrienne Buller
– after geoengineering: climate tragedy, repair, and restoration by Holly Jean Buck
– against crisis epistemology by kyle whyte
– discard studies: wasting, systems, and power by Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky
– An alternative planetary future? Digital sovereignty frameworks and the decolonial option by Sebastián Lehuedé
– ‘Socialism is not just Built for a Hundred Years’: Renewable Energy and Planetary Thought in the Early Soviet Union (1917–1945) by Daniela Russ
– Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador by Thea Riofrancos
– The Security–Sustainability Nexus: Lithium Onshoring in the Global North by Thea Riofrancos
– The Internet Shutdown and Revolutionary Politics: Defining the Infrastructural Power of the Internet by Michael Truscello
– The world wide web of carbon: Toward a relational footprinting of information and communications technology’s climate impacts by Anne Pasek, Hunter Vaughan, and Nicole Starosielski.
– Shifting from ‘sustainability’ to regeneration by Bill Reed
– A Digital Tech Deal: Digital Socialism, Decolonization, and Reparations for a Sustainable Global Economy by Michael Kwet
– We Need To Rewild The Internet by Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon
– Beyond Wiindigo Infrastructure by Winona LaDuke and Deborah Cowen
– How ‘Green’ Computing is Opening Up a New Frontier in Arctic Norway by Janna Frenzel
– A resourcification manifesto: Understanding the social process of resources becoming resources
– What might degrowth computing look like? + Strategies for Degrowth Computing
Water justice and technology. The Covid-19 crisis, computational resource control, and water relief policy
– Draft paper on IETF; framing environmental concerns and sustainability solutions by Fieke Jansen + Solar Protocol: Exploring Energy-Centered Design
– Draft dissertation chapter about the ITU and IETF work on environment-related standards by Kimberly Anastacio
open call for fellows Become an infralab fellow for the 2025-2026 academic year! – deadline 15 August 2025
Become an infralab fellow for the 2025-2026 academic year! For fellows, we offer: an affiliation with the lab; participation in the (intellectual life of the) lab, the possibility to join us on lab research days; and have a space and platform to co-organize activities. We request that you join our reading groups, organize an activity, and (co-)author a paper with us. We welcome proposals from both researchers and practitioners at every stage of their career.
Submit a short statement of interest (max. three paragraphs) detailing your plan and motivation, and a resume to submission@criticalinfralab.net before 15 August.
