critical infrastructure lab

It is an open secret that the hardware in our smart devices contains not only plastics but also conflict minerals such as copper and gold. Technology is not neutral!

Artists and researchers Patrícia J. Reis and Stefanie Wuschitz investigate on alternative hardware from locally sourced materials, from a feminist perspective, to develop and speculate upon renewable practices. They call it Feminist Hardware!

Through these lenses, they researched on fair-traded, ethical, biodegradable hardware for environmental justice, building circuits that use ancient community-centred crafts encouraging de-colonial thinking, market forces to be disobeyed, and future technologies to be imagined.

In this lecture, they will share their research process behind Feminist Hardware, and present artistic alternatives that aim to reconnect technology with ecology, community, and care.

Join us on March 30th for the lecture and discussion on eco-feminist decolonial hardware with Patrícia J. Reis and Stefanie Wuschitz. The lecture will take place from 17.00 at the Bushuis in room F0.01.

Please RSVP here.

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About the speakers

Patrícia J. Reis (b. 1981, Lisbon, PT) is a Vienna-based media artist and researcher whose practice explores human and more-than-human entanglements with technology through feminist hacking, sensory interaction, and embodied interfaces.

Her installations investigate touch, consent, and care, often inviting intimate, activeparticipation. Reis studied Painting (ESAD, 2004), Media Art (MA, Lusófona University, 2011), and completed a Ph.D. in Art at the University of Évora (2016). She was a fellow of the FCT of Portugal (2011–15) and Assistant Professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Beja (2006–12). From 2020–23 she was postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna within the project Feminist hacking: building circuits as an artistic
practice, and guest researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute, TU Berlin. Since 2015, she has lectured at the Digital Arts Department, University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she currently leads the FWF Elise Richter PEEK project Hacking the body as the black box.

Since 2012, she has been a board member of Mz Baltazar’s Lab*, Vienna’s feminist artist-run space. Reis has exhibited widely, received the Outstanding Artist Award in Media Art (AT, 2021), and participated in international programs and residencies, including IMPACT ART San Francisco, Banff Centre (CA), HWK Delmenhorst, and Edith-Russ-Haus (DE).

Find out more about Patricia: www.patriciajreis.com | https://www.instagram.com/patricia_j_reis/ | https://hackingthebody.org/

Stefanie Wuschitz (b. 1981, Vienna, Austria) is a data-research artist based in Vienna. Her scholarship generates data that shapes her artistic output. She investigates the entanglement of gender, technology and power. Within the young, Eurocentric field of data studies, her current projects focus on a blind spot of South East Asia: Indonesia’s position within fast shifting techno empires. Her degrowth inspired artistic method entails upcyling, salvaging sustainable, locally sourced materials to create ecofeminist interactive art installations. Her drawings and animations explore new forms of storytelling, knowledge transfer and documentary.

She graduated in the MFA program Transmedia Arts in 2006 (Brigitte Kowanz) and completed her Master’s at NYU 2008 at Tisch School of the Arts in NYC. In 2009 she founded the hacklab and collective Mz* Baltazar’s Laboratory. She completed her Doctorate on Feminist Hackerspaces at TU Vienna in 2014. Since then she has held post-doctoral positions at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, TU Vienna, Universität der Künste Berlin, and TU Berlin. She conducted several arts-based research projects as PI (titled Feminist Hacking, Salon of Open Secrets, Coded Feminisms in Indonesia). Her artwork was featured in solo exhibitions, film festivals and international venues.

Find out more about Stefanie: https://stefaniewuschitz.cargo.site/ | https://www.instagram.com/stefanie_wuschitz/

Fieke Jansen, Andreas Baur, Corinne Cath, Niels ten Oever, and Nai Lee Kalema are organising a session at the AoIR2025.

The rapidly changing geopolitical landscape forces us to rethink the relation between infrastructure, politics, control, and power. This panel contributes to discussions on ruptures by exploring how digital infrastructures reconfigure the state, market, and citizen nexus and presenting research approaches that interrogate transnational networks by centring their materiality. Jointly, the papers showcase how infrastructures are used as a continuation of politics with material means.

The authors present five case studies from the global north and south, which foreground the delegation and transfer of power away from states and citizens and the anxiety resulting from this. The papers frame the leveraging of infrastructures in global power relations through the lenses of bordering, infrastructural anxiety, defamiliarization, financialization, and necropolitics. Together, the papers show how the transfer of power to third parties, with their particular agendas and interests, leads to a reconfiguration of control, bringing new challenges to states and citizens.

Jointly, the detailed case studies raise questions about initiatives surrounding digital sovereignty, digital public infrastructures, and global internet governance as means of citizen emancipation and their ability to serve the public interest. The panel invites engagement with the development of new infrastructural ideologies to underpin sustainable and equitable futures.

The panel is timely because it shows that countries have not (yet) developed an answer to the transition from privatization and globalization to predatory neorealism, which echoes 19th-century conceptions of power that assert that ‘might is right’.

Learn more: https://www.conftool.org/aoir2025/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=596&presentations=show

Dmitry Kuznetsov is chairing a panel on Platforms & Governments at the AoIR2025.

https://www.conftool.org/aoir2025/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=301

Dmitry Kuznetsov will present this paper at the upcoming AOIR2025 conference in Brazil https://www.conftool.org/aoir2025/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=488#paperID379

This paper examines how the Russian state, following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, accelerated coercive controls over internet infrastructure through the rapid deployment of Technical Measures to Combat Threats (TSPU). Building on Maxigas and ten Oever’s (2023) framework of infrastructural ideologies, the study introduces infrastructural coercion as a crisis-driven strategy, contrasting it with hegemonic models reliant on tacit compliance. The research combines analysis of legislative texts with an examination of sessions from the Conference of Russian Telecom Operators (КРОС, 2018–2024). Findings reveal operators’ strategies to mitigate coercive measures: exploiting legal ambiguities (e.g., license reclassification), adopting phased DPI implementation, and leveraging sanctions-driven import substitution. KROS discourse shifted markedly—from openly mocking “unworkable” laws in 2018 to framing post-2022 challenges as “temporary difficulties” within an optimistic techno-nationalist trajectory.

The study challenges state-centric narratives of digital sovereignty by centering infrastructural actors’ agency. It demonstrates that tools like DPI are neither neutral nor inevitable: their adoption reflects ideological priorities, while material constraints expose fissures in state control. Russia’s case illustrates that “great firewalls” can emerge rapidly using existing technologies. By foregrounding implementers’ negotiations, this research advances scholarship on infrastructural governance and the political valence of technical systems.

As Europe races to scale up its AI capabilities, the Netherlands faces a pivotal moment. Will we replicate the US model of scaling up at all costs, or chart our own course that reflects European values, creates economic benefits for society, and retains value within the regions?

AI is rapidly becoming embedded across every industry, and we are told the solution is to build more, scale faster, and to subsidize harder. But the reality is: the infrastructure already exists – it’s just not being used effectively, and it’s mostly not European. An estimated €19 billion is extracted annually from European economies through AI infrastructure controlled by US tech giants. They use European energy, land, and resources while providing minimal economic returns through taxes or employment.

Too often, AI services consumed in Europe are bundled with non-European cloud infrastructure, locking in dependency, extracting economic value, and bypassing local providers. The result is a silent outflow of public value – from our energy systems, our land, our grid into the hands of a few dominant players who operate outside of our tax and policy frameworks.

This SDIA event brings together policymakers, regional leaders, infrastructure providers, and AI developers to answer one central question: How do we deploy AI infrastructure in a way that benefits the Dutch economy and society – rather than draining resources to foreign hyperscalers?

Let’s get it right – in a way that’s sustainable, sovereign, and good for people.

Do you have something to say? Then sign-up and join the conversation on October 1st, 2025 in Bushuis – Oost-Indisch Huis

On 18th September 2025 the symposium ‘The Politics of AI: Governance, Resistance, Alternatives’ will take place at Goldsmiths, University of London. You can register for the symposium here. The symposium is part of the BRAID project Sustainable AI Futures, which is mobilising interdisciplinary perspectives on AI and the environment, including the social life of AI environmental governance tools.

The rapid expansion of AI and computational infrastructure raises critical questions on whether we are governing AI responsibly, and if that is even possible at all. Contemporary governance regimes reduce social and environmental impacts to mere issues of quantification of harms and management of resources. Even if we track down an elusive number for its carbon emissions or water usage, how can we reconcile that with AI’s complex, messy and highly uncertain social impacts? What are AI’s sociopolitical effects, and how do we begin to notice, imagine, manage, or measure these effects? 

This symposium aims to consolidate researchers approaching questions of AI’s implications for sustainability, public interest technology, and economic justice across multiple disciplines. While there is a proliferation of research and public discourse around the central role that AI is playing in governance and infrastructure across multiple political contexts, the siloed approaches that exist across these disciplines have not been able to account for the complex global dimensions of AI politics and contestation across its value chain. This event invites researchers approaching these questions from different angles to propose ways in which we can come together to assess AI’s impacts in more systematic and comprehensive ways.

As a response to the current wave of AI development and deployment, concepts like responsible AI, sustainable AI, and AI governance have proliferated to manage these impacts at the point of design and consumption. We invite exploration of the nuances of these different approaches, as well as different national and regional contexts. However, despite the best intentions, these practices often end up reinforcing the very logics that they seek to question due to a lack of comprehensive assessment of global AI supply chains. As AI becomes more embedded in collective economic futures, how deeply are its core logics entangled with structural shifts – from green capitalism and the twin transition, to austerity, war, and accelerationism?

If alternative visions of AI are possible, what do they look like and what questions do they raise? What could AI look like if designed and operationalised outside dominant commercial and geopolitical frameworks? What possibilities emerge when we centre justice, sustainability, democracy, and decoloniality in AI development? How might the answers be different in different places around the world?

If AI should be resisted rather than governed, then where, how, by whom, with what resources and strategies? What precedents and projects of organising a resistance to AI exist, and what can we expect from the future? Where are the leverage points? If we reject the idea that AI is inevitable, what are the alternatives, and what new ethical, political, and epistemological questions do such alternatives raise?  

We invite scholars who centre issues of power, equity, (in)justice, governance and resistance in AI infrastructures in their research to submit a 300-word abstract for this symposium. If accepted, you will be expected to give a 20-minute presentation.

Third edition of the biannual political and educational program, organized by the collective Ministry of Space, A11 – Initiative for Economic and Social Rights and SHARE Foundation, brings four days of lectures, workshops, discussions and exchange among 150+ participants from the region (Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania and Greece). 

The desire for substantial social transformation will be our key driver in rethinking progressive policies and practices that demonstrate radically different social and production relations – we will share and (re)question existing struggles and experiments, our own roles and tactics in a common struggle for a just society within the planetary  limits. Forum also aims to inspire meeting and collaboration among actors from different disciplines and fields of action – activists, civil society, political movements, academia, media, etc. 

1001 Ideas for Sustainable and equitable Internet

Fieke Jansen & Niels ten Oever (Critical Infrastrukture Lab)

Day 2// August 25
12.30 – 14.00

Lithium mines in the Andes and e-waste dumps in Ghana seem far from clean data centers—yet one cannot exist without the other. This interactive session explores why climate and environmental impacts must be central to digital rights struggles. We’ll cover raw material extraction, land exploitation, and the extractive tech economy harming climate justice—then brainstorm how all this connects to your digital rights work.

Read about the entire programme here: https://ministarstvoprostora.org/zemaljski-forum-2025/

SDIA in collaboration with the critical infrastructure lab is organizing an event on June 20th for the next chapter in our journey toward shaping thriving Dutch digital ecosystems — region by region.

Following our last event on operationalizing values in the Dutch digital infrastructure, we now turn our attention to building thriving digital ecosystems, ecosystems that are sustainable, transparent, and create positive local impact.

This event brings together regional policymakers, leaders, and innovators to showcase progress and concrete actions already underway, and to collaborate on next steps for digital ecosystems that benefit communities, businesses, and the environment.

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to join policymakers, IT infrastructure providers, and sustainability-focused customers in shaping the future of digital infrastructure in the Netherlands. Whether you’re a policy maker looking to stimulate regional development, a service provider aiming to gain competitive
advantage through sustainability, or a customer wanting to influence the market with your purchasing power – this event is for you.

June 20th 13:45 – 17:00
Sign-up here: https://www.sdia.io/events/thriving-digital-ecosystems-amsterdam

During the last 5 years, emerging from Europe to gradually cascade to other corners of the world, the standardisation landscape of quantum technologies has started getting shape. But what is actually being standardised in a field that is still in search for its ‘killer’ use-case? Who is at the table and who is leading the standardisation discourse? How are traditional geopolitical antinomies play out in the nascent – and highly sensitive – field of quantum tech and what is the role of Europe therein? Is it really too early to standardise quantum tech? This study represents the first empirical exploration of the emerging field of quantum standardisation. Through active observation of the workings in the CEN-CENELEC JTC 22 and the ISO-IEC JTC 3 as well as through interviews with relevant stakeholders, this research projects illustrates aspects of a field where the (very early) science of quantum technologies (including and especially quantum computing) meets the (very eager) policy demand for security and commercialisation.

This lecture will discuss findings of a year-long empirical study of the field of quantum standardisation. The talk will be hosted (in person, with the possibility to attend remotely) by the Law and Governance of Quantum Technologies group, Institute for Information Law in collaboration with the Asser Institute and the critical infrastructure lab, University of Amsterdam.

Practical details:

Date: 14 January 2025
Time: 15.30-16.45 (followed by drinks reception)
Location: IViR Room, Institute for Information Law, Roeterseilandcomplex, Building A, 5th floor, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, 1018 WV Amsterdam

Interested in attending, or receiving updates about future events?: REGISTER HERE

The wars in Ukraine and Palestine raise new questions about digital self-determination, digital sovereignty, the use of digital tools in warfare, resistance, and democracies. On November 15, the Digital Networks, Communications, and Technologies Cluster of ARTES is organizing a research seminar to exchange ideas about the social, cultural, and political impacts of war. This research seminar brings together different perspectives to understand the role of technologies in military warfare, digital infrastructures under fire, the role of culture in times of occupation, and the everyday lives of people affected by war.

Please check the website of the event for more information.

Supply Chain Security in Software Infrastructures: Pagers exploded in Lebanon on September 2024, thrusting supply chain attacks into the spotlight of global media attention. As a breakdown of logistical media, this attack harks back to a longer history of engagement with supply chain security issues in the world of computing. I examine such background through dissecting empirical examples based on archival material pertaining to software infrastructures that developers rely on for ensuring the authenticity of their products. Ultimately, exploding pagers can serve as an edge case for the theoretical framework of infrastructural ideologies that is being developed under the aegis of the critical infrastructure lab.

Location: Belle van Zuylenzaal at the University Library, Singel 425.

Time: 09:00-12:00

On November 5-7 we will host three conversations on Tech-poetics and the Cosmos of Resistance, Regenerative infrastructures, and Playing with Solarpunk Computing and Tiny Infrastructures. Speakers include Thiane Neves, Miguel de Barros, Madeline R. Young-Touré, Jen Liu, Joana Varon, Sunjoo Lee, Luã Cruz, Spencer 張正 Chan, and Esther Mwema. See more info on each panel below. 

To discuss the ecological burdens of computation, challenge the notion of scale, uplift communal and regenerative computing practices, and dream together about alternative socio-technical pathways that center people and planet over profit and capital.

Panel 1: Playing with Solarpunk Computing and Tiny Infrastructures
November 5, 12h-1.30pm (UT-3), 10am – 11.30am EST, and 4.00-5.30 PM (UTC +1)
Zoom Link to Register:
https://mozilla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMkfu6rrD4tG9TuQENae6V2NSbadwjc3Ckz

Panel 2: Tech-poetics and the Cosmos of Resistance
November 6, 12h-1.30pm (UT-3), 10am – 11.30am EST, and 4.00-5.30 PM (UTC +1)
Zoom Link to Register:
https://mozilla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMldeyhpzIqHNUbB-TRa-FufW8qMrkwbnJY

Panel 3: Regenerative infrastructures 
November 7, 12h-1.30pm (UT-3), 10am – 11.30am EST, and 4.00-5.30 PM (UTC +1)
Zoom Link to Register:
https://mozilla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0vcu2hrT4sGNX5CFg7ya2Sz4Qaq2XCM17V

The panels

Panel 1: Playing with Solarpunk Computing and Tiny Infrastructures
November 5, 12h-1.30pm (UT-3), 10am – 11.30am EST, and 4.00-5.30 PM (UTC +1)
Speakers: Luã Cruz, Spencer 張正 Chan, and Esther Mwema
Moderator: Michelle Thorne

We already know what Big Tech built for profit looks like. But what if we reimagine digital infrastructures with community service, joy, and just the right amount of technology to meet collective needs? This panel explores these possibilities through solarpunk computing, tiny infrastructures, and other alternative models that foster sustainable, justice-oriented digital futures. We’ll learn from communities managing their own internet connectivity, gaining insights into resilience and meeting local needs through grassroots efforts. We’ll also hear from community-led renewable energy projects and how they inform sustainable, rights-based governance of technology. The panel invites us to rethink digital infrastructures — envisioning ways to reduce resource use while designing technologies that truly support collective well-being.

Panel 2: Tech-poetics and the Cosmos of Resistance
November 6th, 12h-1.30pm (UT-3), 10am – 11.30am EST, and 4.00-5.30 PM (UTC +1)
Speakers: Thiane Neves, Miguel de Barros, and Madeline R. Young-Touré 
Moderator: Lori Regattieri

This panel explores the intersection of technology, infrastructure, and socio-environmental impacts within the framework of racial capitalism and colonial power structures. Inspired by the critical writings of Sylvia Wynter and Denise Ferreira da Silva, it challenges prevailing biocentric and anthropocentric ideologies to redefine what it means to be human in a world deeply shaped by industrial and digital technologies. Through a blend of research, art, film, and documentary, the panelists critique extractive practices and their devastating effects on both human and ecological systems. By engaging with themes of infrastructure, environmental degradation, and colonial legacies, this dialogue envisions a future where technology systems are designed with a deep recognition of all life forms, fostering resistance, solidarity, and policies that honor interconnectedness and belonging in a cosmos of shared existence.

Panel 3 Regenerative infrastructures 
November 7th, 12h-1.30pm (UT-3), 10am – 11.30am EST, and 4.00-5.30 PM (UTC +1
Speakers: Jen Liu, Joana Varon, Sunjoo Lee
Moderator: Fieke Jansen

Internet infrastructures are a central but often invisible part of our lives. Recent protest and resistance against data centers have made certain challenges surrounding our infrastructures visible but fails to address the underlying values of growth, extractive, and abundance. Local win end up displaying the challenges to other territories. To flip the script and move beyond what is to what could be this round table centers on the idea of regenerative infrastructures, a term we use to describe restorative ecological and social approaches to infrastructures. We asked our speakers to offer different perspectives on regenerative infrastructures, focussing on community, environment, self-reliance, and autonomy, and alternative ways of thinking about infrastructures, from exploring low-tech and post-silicon computing. For example, washed-away concrete bridges in the rainy season deposit solid waste in rivers and lands and require external expertise to rebuild, whereas bamboo bridges decompose and can be rebuilt by the community.  

This panel series is supported by the Mozilla Alumni Connection Grants

Please RSVP here

We would like to cordially invite you to our Global Digital Cultures Soirée, which will take place on Wednesday, 16 October, 2024, between 18:00 and 22:00, the Brakke Grond Cafe. 

The speakers this time are Fernanda R Rosa (Virginia Tech, USA) and Niels ten Oever (UvA) and Fieke Jansen (UvA) of the Critical Infrastructure Lab. Fernanda’s research, ‘Following code with code ethnography’, asks: is it possible to decolonize infrastructural interdependencies between the global North and the global South? Meanwhile, Niels and Fieke will present early findings from an experiment in co-developing alternative infrastructural futures that center people and planet over profit and capital.

After brief presentations from these scholars, the floor will be open for questions and comments from participants. 

As always, our soirées involve food and drinks; the evening will start with drinks, and dinner will be served around 20:00. Attendance is free of charge.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Date: 16 October, 18:00 – 22:00

Please RSVP here

Location: Brakke Grond Cafe

Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance recently conducted two surveys targeting both IT providers and IT purchasers to examine the current landscape and the role of sustainability and regionality in IT procurement decisions. The event aims to kick-start a broader conversation about the core values that should shape the IT cloud and infrastructure market towards greater sustainability. As global companies continue to dominate the market, it’s becoming increasingly difficult—yet more critical—to find ways to level the playing field. This event will focus on discussing the survey findings and exploring how we can shift the market towards enhanced sustainability and transparency.

Date: 15 October 17:00 – 20:00

Location: Humanities Lab, University of Amsterdam, Bushuis F0.01,

Corinne Cath en Fieke Jansen spreken in een breakout sessie bij Internet in Beeld: Verleden, Heden & Toekomst.

Op donderdag 10 oktober vindt het event ‘Internet in beeld: Verleden, Heden & Toekomst’ plaats bij Felix Meritis in Amsterdam. Internet Society Nederland (ISOC NL), het Platform Internetstandaarden (Internet.nl), het Nederlands Internet Governance Forum (NL IGF), het ministerie van Economische Zaken, SIDN en ECP I Platform voor de InformatieSamenleving nodigen u hiervoor van harte uit. Er is deze dag een inspirerend programma voor u samengesteld met aansluitend een bruisende borrel ‘Bits, Bites & Bubbels’ ter ere van het 25-jarige bestaan van ISOC NL en de uitreiking van de Lifetime Achievement Awards!

Meer informatie en aanmelden vind je hier.

Please join us at the Documentation in Times of Crisis: conversation between Hiba Omari (RIWAQ), UKRAiNATV, Fieke Jansen (critical infrastructure lab), Nermin Elsherif (Utrecht University) and Alexandra Barancova & Eric Kluitenberg on the 29 of September at Framer Framed, Amsterdam.

The conversation is part of the full-day symposium “Really? Art and Knowledge in Time of Crisis”.

Numerous commentators and critics have observed a profound crisis in what it means to know and not know – an epistemological crisis, a crisis of knowledge. While this issue is old, there has been an intense debate for over four decades about what constitutes ‘valid’ knowledge and what does not. However, this problem has been greatly exacerbated by the spread of massive misinformation tactics. These tactics, employed by a new breed of malign state and corporate actors, are designed to create strategic doubt using sophisticated internet-based media forms.

Date & time: September 29th, 14:30

Location: Framer Framed, Amsterdam

More info & sign up here

In 2023, six out of nine planetary boundaries have been breached. We are facing multiple ecological and environmental crises while we continuously ignore planetary boundaries. Digitalisation and the use of Information and  Communication Technologies (ICTs) are proposed as ways to face these crises. But is this techno-solutionism, i.e. the hope that more technology can solve the problems of earlier technology, not just an utopia? ICT can provide some benefits, such as reducing the need for travel or improving energy management. However, their ubiquitous deployment and use, and their constant renewal cause severe socio-environmental damage and fall short of equity throughout their life cycle. We question the relevance of continuously introducing new digital systems, and the relevance of propositions solely focused on improving efficiency without addressing the socio-environmental damage these systems cause. As is, these systems and their optimizations are “band-aid” solutions that fall short of developing broader perspectives and focusing on systemic change – revising our current models and considering alternative systems.

The aim of SICT 2024 is to provide participants with a comprehensive insight into the multifaceted landscape of socio-economic harms along the supply chain and life-cycle of products, as well as the efforts being made to promote sustainability issues, and to foster a systemic understanding of the collective action required to shape a more sustainable future in the ICT sector. Throughout the week, voices from academia, politics, artists, activists and organisations will come together to discuss and analyse the sustainability challenges facing the ICT sector. The summer school will aim to move away from neo-colonialist and extractivist debates on how much pollution is acceptable for progress, to an approach that is making room for the most impacted to be heard.

We invite people from diverse communities, academic fields, the industry and arts to come together for a five-day summer school in early September 2024, in Brussels, Belgium. The event will be held in English. Places are available to master/PhD students, researchers, senior academics and people working in the industry and arts. We may have a limited number of scholarships available, details on this will be announced in the coming months.

Dates: September 9-13 2024

If you’d like to register, please follow this link.

On July 8, 2024, an important multistakeholder meeting took place at Huys Clingendael, organized by the Clingendael Institute in collaboration with Internet Society Netherlands (ISOC NL). During this event, titled “Digital Sovereignty: Sense or Nonsense?”, around 150 stakeholders and experts gathered to discuss the current state of digital sovereignty and to identify concrete steps to ensure digital autonomy. Ruben Brave, chairman of ISOC NL, opened the meeting with an inspiring speech, followed by Maaike Okano-Heijmans, Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Geopolitics of Technology and Digitization Program at the Clingendael Institute, who moderated the sessions.

Theme I – Data Sovereignty: What Do We Want to Protect?

• Availability and Access: The panelists emphasized the risk of losing access to essential data and the need to reduce dependence on non-European cloud providers.
• Protection of Information: There was a debate about which information should remain within Europe and be actively protected, especially in sectors like defense, public administration, energy, and healthcare.
• Solutions: A balanced approach combining both protection and efficient data processing was seen as necessary to ensure both security and innovation.

Theme II – European Beehive Cloud Megascaler

• Scope and Definition: Developing an all-in-one package with essential services such as S3 object storage, Kubernetes, and IAM, meeting the highest safety and interoperability standards.
• Role of the Government: The government was encouraged to act as both a customer and investor, and to stimulate prototyping and the creation of a Beehive Cloud Megascaler.

The critical infrastructure lab fellow, Corinne Cath, contributed to the gathering as a member of the expert panel, together with Diana Krieger, Bert Hubert, Martijn Lucassen and Paul Brand.

Please find more information, including key takeaways and a preview of an upcoming follow-up event in October 2024 (in Dutch) here.

The Digital Methods Initiative (DMI), Amsterdam, is holding its annual Summer School on ‘Visual methods: From platform aesthetics and data visualisation to AI hermeneutics’. The format is that of a (social media and web) data sprint, with tutorials as well as hands-on work for telling stories with data. There is also a programme of keynote speakers. It is intended for advanced Master’s students, PhD candidates and motivated scholars who would like to work on (and complete) a digital methods project in an intensive workshop setting. For a preview of what the event is like, you can view short video clips from previous editions of the School.

Dates: 1-12 July 2024

More information here:
https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/SummerSchool2024

https://summerschool.uva.nl/content/summer-courses/digital-methods-summer-school/digital-methods-summer-school.html

5G, de vijfde generatie draadloze technologie, staat aan de vooravond van een revolutionaire verschuiving in de manier waarop we communiceren, werken en leven. Deze geavanceerde technologie belooft niet alleen ultrasnelle mobiele connectiviteit, maar biedt ook een breed scala aan toepassingen die onze samenleving zullen transformeren. Maar is dit wel iets wat we moeten willen? En wat heeft 5G de consument te bieden?

Sprekers:

Aina Seerden

Imme Raurus

Niels ten Oever

Website

Tickets

Join us on Friday, June, 14th when Niels ten Oever will be speaking about his recent paper ‘Internet Sanctions on Russian Media: Actions and Effects‘ at Workshop session 3.

The 2024 Politicologenetmaal (or: Annual Political Science Workshops of the Low Countries) will be held in Maastricht, bringing together political scientists from over 40 universities for two days of inspiring workshops, thought-provoking discussions, and valuable networking opportunities.

Please check the event website for more information and the programme.

Description: 

The war in Ukraine is known to have informed and inspired the acceleration of EU legislations aimed at strengthening the EU’s capacity to protect its “cyberspace” against the spread of disinformation and foreign interference, which the European Commission now equates to “ European digital sovereignty”.

While many have claimed the predominant discursive nature of digital sovereignty policies in the EU, recent sanctions banning the online broadcasting of Russian media outlets on EU territory could be interpreted as one of the first techno-material digital sovereignty measures. In this seminar, Prof. Niels ten Oever will present his latest research on this topical issue by exploring the implications of these recent sanctions for the European approach to Internet infrastructures and digital sovereignty.

Speaker:

Prof. Niels ten Oever, University of Amsterdam

You can find out more about this online event here.

Despite ever-increasing discourse about internet fragmentation and digital sovereignty, the world has never been more digitally connected. At the same time, information networks are continuously being reconfigured by states and corporations at different layers of the stack. Taking this into account, what methods and theoretical approaches can be levered to analyze power in communication networks today? In this talk we will analyze the implementation of EU sanctions against Russian media, and the development of 5G and internet standards to see how the developing framework of infrastructural ideologies can help us understand the shaping of global communication infrastructures while taking the political and the material into account.

Niels ten Oever – assistant professor at the European Studies department and co-principal investigator with the critical infrastructure lab at the University of Amsterdam

Valentin Goujon – Doctorant au médialab (Sciences Po)

Hugo Estecahandy – Doctorant chez Institut Français de Géopolitique

Date: Fri, Apr 26, 2024, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM

More info here

Our internet-connected devices hold an unprecedented power to multiply us into a manifold of realities. The conventional way to conceptualize this is segregational – we “space-out” and we’re in cyberspace. However, as Heidegger noticed, one of the essential spatial practices of living beings is coming-into-nearness: “spacing-in”. Adding Lefebvre, the space that we space-out and space-in is a social product: not simply an element or sphere within which the social operates, but rather the expression of it. It’s a multitude of connections, flows of communication and capital, conditioned by politics and economic relationships, defined by class struggles, represented by those in power, and lived by those who are subject to that power. The complex composite of ontologies that are unified within the internet are territories where cables and devices are juxtaposed with class struggle, virtual internet protocols, geopolitics, and human cognition. The escapist “spacing-out” is only one part of the picture. Let’s space-in.

More info on OT301 website here

On Thursday, April 4th, ECP, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Dutch Internet Governance Forum (NL IGF), is organizing the ECP Special ‘Digital Human Rights’ at Bleyenberg in The Hague.

This meeting will highlight both the risks and opportunities of digitization for the safeguarding of human rights. Following an introduction by Human Rights Ambassador Wim Geerts, experts will discuss the importance of digital human rights across various layers: digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and digital platforms.

Marjolijn Bonthuis – Programmadirecteur Digitale Veiligheid & Vertrouwen – ECP

Wim Geerts – Ambassadeur Mensenrechten – Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken

Niels ten Oever – Infrastructuuronderzoeker & Universitair Docent – Universiteit van Amsterdam

Ajuna Soerjadi – Directeur – Expertisecentrum Data-Ethiek

Naomi Appelman – Promovendus – Instituut voor Informatierecht (IViR) Universiteit van Amsterdam

4 April 2024, 9:30 – 13:30

More info in Dutch here

Investigate AI’s contradictory role within climate change.
This event is part of the Goldsmiths AI UK Fringe public discussion series: AI Consciousness, Creativity and the Climate Crisis in collaboration with the The Alan Turing Institute.

Dr Dan McQuillan | Goldsmiths, University of London will lead the discussion and is joined by:

Boxi Wu – Oxford Internet Institute / Google DeepMind

Fieke Jansen – Critical Infrastructure Lab

Sebastián Lehuedé – King’s College London

Patrick Brodie – University College Dublin

19 March 2024, 19:30 – 21:00 CET
Learn more and secure your ticket via this link

The future of the tech industry is in infrastructure, not data. This means that those companies that control key infrastructure, like chips and cloud computing, hold sway. Companies like ASML, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services (AWS), rather than X or Meta, will become the most powerful players. Is it their choices that will influence what our collective futures look like? Do we need to adapt our understanding of power in the tech sector to this new reality?

23 Feb 2024, 17:00

Registration info on spui25 website

About the speakers

Michael Veale is an Associate Professor in digital rights and regulation at University College London’s Faculty of Laws. His research focuses on how to understand and address challenges of power and justice that digital technologies and their users create and exacerbate, in areas such as privacy-enhancing technologies and machine learning.

Corinne Cath is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Delft, where they study the political economy of cloud computing. Cath is also a fellow at the UVA’s critical infralab and a research associate at the Minderoo Centre at the University of Cambridge. As an anthropologist, their interest lies in how power moves through infrastructures (in particular cloud computing).

Who holds, controls, and creates power in contemporary societies? On the occasion of their new book, The New Knowledge: Information, Data and the Remaking of Global Power, Blayne Haggart and Natasha Tusikov will present their answer to this question. They will take us along from Google’s Internet-of-Things projects, new modes of property and knowing that arose during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the ideology through which power exercised.

08 Feb 2024, 20:00
Registration info on spui25 website

About the speakers

Blayne Haggart is an associate professor of political science at Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada. Dr. Haggart’s research focuses on the international political economy of knowledge, particularly intellectual property rights, data governance and internet governance.

Natasha Tusikov, assosciate professor at York University, researches at the intersection among law, crime, technology, and regulation. She is a senior fellow at the Balisillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada and a visiting fellow with the Justice and Technoscience Lab (JusTech Lab), School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) at the Australian National University.

Joris van Hoboken is a Professor of Law in the Brussels School of Governance’s LLM programme. He is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam. He is also affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Law Science Technology & Society (LSTS). Van Hoboken works on the intersection of fundamental rights protection (data privacy, freedom of expression, non-discrimination) and the governance of platforms and internet-based services.

Marta Morvillo is Assistant Professor in European Legal and Economic Governance at the Department of European Studies, University of Amsterdam. Her research lies at the interface of EU law, constitutional law, and expert governance. Before joining the UvA, she was Emile Noël fellow at the NYU Law School (2020-2021) and Adjunct professor in Constitutional adjudication at the University of Bologna (2021).

Niels ten Oever is Assistant Professor at the European Studies department and co-principal investigator with the critical infrastructure lab at the University of Amsterdam. Next to that, he is a visiting professor with the Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas. His research focuses on how norms, values, and ideologies get inscribed, resisted, and subverted in communication infrastructures through their transnational governance.

Register here

Join us on November 23rd for a conversation about the future of the Internet, what we get wrong about how it works today, and why the future of the tech industry is determined by computing infrastructure not data.

About the speakers

Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic and author of Uncanny Networks (2002), Dark Fiber (2002), My First Recession (2003), Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012), Social Media Abyss (2016) and Sad by Design (2019). In 2004 he founded the Institute of Network Cultures at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. His centre organizes conferences, publications and research networks such as Video Vortex (online video), Unlike Us (alternatives in social media), Critical Point of View (Wikipedia), Society of the Query (the culture of search), MoneyLab (internet-based revenue models in the arts). Recent projects deal with digital publishing and the future of art criticism. He also teaches at the European Graduate School (Saas-Fee/Malta) where he supervises PhD students.

Corinne Cath is a cultural anthropologist studying the politics of Internet governance, AI and cloud computing. She currently works as a postdoc at the University of Delft in The Netherlands with Dr. Seda Gürses and Dr. Prof. Linnet Taylor. She works on questions of computational infrastructure (cloud computing and mobile devices) in the context of the administration of justice. Her current research focuses on how cloud computing and AI are transforming society, the consequences of these transformations for public institutions—and the adequacy of existing technology policy efforts that touch on cloud computing. She is a research affiliate at Cambridge University’s Minderoo Centre and a fellow at the critical infrastructure lab at the University of Amsterdam. 

Keynote at symposium organised by Deakin University’s Critical Digital Infrastructures and Interfaces research group in Melbourne, Australia. Take a closer look at how our interactions with digital technologies are shaped by the common ‘sovereigns’ that construct the infrastructures of daily life!

“Featuring a keynote by Maxigas of the Critical Infrastructure Lab, and bringing together bright emerging voices researching the social and political implications of contemporary digital technologies, this symposium will examine what matters across diverse topics such as the platformisation of music culture, new ways of understanding digital territories, hearing technologies driving health and wellbeing economies, and the feminist technoscience of humanitarian labour.”

View the program

Wednesday 22 November 2023, 09:00 – 14:00

Deakin Downtown, Melbourne, Australia

Join Maxigas in discussing the role of academic labs in bringing about desired futures. The “science shop” movement pioneered in the Netherlands directly linked academic institutions with social movements to counterbalance techniques of management tied to capital. These moves have reverberated through the growth of ‘labs’ of science technology and society with normative goals. The Citizens Lab (U of T), Critical Infrastructures Lab, and in some ways ADM+S, reflect modes of thinking through ways to affect wider cultural, political, technological changes, with the limited capacities and budgets of public academic modes of engagement. We ask what do the examples of working in an academic setting with an institutionalised mandate for social change map to, feel like, and what can we learn from them? If you’d like join discussion and reflection on the continuing evolution of ‘labs’ please mail Luke.h@Deakin.edu.au .

Monday 20 November 2023, 12:00 – 13:30

Deakin Downtown, Melbourne, Australia

https://www.admscentre.org.au/event/do-labs-have-politics/

Sign up here: https://spui25.nl/programma/eaten-by-the-internet

Our world is eaten by the Internet. This means that those who control the Internet control the bounds of public speech, economic production, social cohesion, and politics, making its infrastructure a core political terrain in the networked age. This evening we honor a new book about the power of Big Tech and the future of the digital society, Eaten by the Internet. The discussion with the book’s authors and editor will make Internet infrastructure visible as a key force of political power and urge us to ask how can we ensure the Internet will sustain us, rather than consume us?

To understand power in the contemporary Internet industry, we must look closely at its often invisible infrastructure. This is made of material components such as cell antennas, clouds, chips, data servers, and satellites, but also less tangible, equally crucial standards and software components, including the operating systems, browsers, and computing power that enables connectivity. All these components rarely attract our attention unless something breaks down. And even then, many Internet users won’t ask why.

Eaten by Internet makes Internet infrastructure visible as a force of political power, demonstrating how it is transforming the social world. Four of the original contributors of the book will be present to discuss their chapters, taking on thorny topics, such as power consolidation in the advertisement and cloud industry, online censorship in Asia, the role of Internet infrastructure in governmental and corporate surveillance in the city of Amsterdam, and tech’s environmental impact – amongst others. In doing so, this event will root contemporary technology debates in the politics of digital infrastructure and help us design an Internet that answers to public values.

About the speakers

Corinne Cath is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Delft funded by the Algosoc consortium, a fellow at the UvA’s critical infrastructure lab, and a research associate at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at Cambridge.

Gurshabad Grover is a technologist and legal researcher based in Delhi, India. Gurshabad’s research focuses on network security, censorship, and surveillance.

Fieke Jansen is the co-founder of the critical infrastructure lab and a post-doctoral Researcher at the University of Amsterdam. She also coordinates the Green Screen climate justice and digital rights coalition.

Michael Veale is an Associate Professor in digital rights and regulation at University College London’s Faculty of Laws. His research focuses on understanding and addressing challenges of power and justice that digital technologies and their users create and exacerbate, in areas such as privacy-enhancing technologies and machine learning.

Niels ten Oever is an Assistant Professor of AI and European Democracies at the European Studies Department and co-founder of the critical infrastructure lab at the University of Amsterdam.

Organising and chairing session on standards and infrastructure at the Netherlands Internet Governance Forum.

Round table discussion organised by Open Future and the critical infrastructure lab at the university of amsterdam, department of media, bringing together experts from the academia, civil society and industry

programme download [pdf] // data centre walk flyer [pdf]

day 0 – april 13 – singel library, singel 425, 1012 wp amsterdam

09:00 coffee + registration

• 10:00 welcome and opening
• marieke de goede – dean of the faculty of humanities
• critical infrastructure lab

11:00 morning workshops: infrastructural futures

• sustainable computing infrastructures – michelle thorne
• identifying infrastructure gaps to shift power in the data economy – lisa gutermuth
• imagining the future: what should the next european commission do? – alek tarkowski, zuzanna warso and paul keller

12:30 lunch

13:30 afternoon workshops: maps and models

• data centre walk: the materiality of connectivity, centralization, data centers and data – yan cong
• mapping the network; critical mapping and new perspectives on internet infrastructure and standards – silke steets, nadine schabét, rené tuma, dinah van der geest
• semente – co-designing community-based digital policy – felipe schmidt fonseca & bernardo schepop
• free software user unions? – decentral1se
• permacomputing: are you working in the dark? introduction to permacomputing through a guided visualization and interactive game – ola bonati and lukas engelhardt

16:30 documentation, continuation and report back
17:30 surprise appearance
18:15 walk to waag
18:30 dinner and drinks (waag)


day 1 – april 14 – oude manhuispoort + bushuis

11:00 – 17:00 diy electronics jewelry workshop https://jewelryhacker.org/

09:30 welcome and opening – critical infrastructure lab
10:00 keynote 1 – standards – ksenia ermoshina
11:00 coffee break

11:15 morning panels

geopolitics: shifts, conflicts, and infrastructures

• migration information infrastructures: power, control and responsibility at a new frontier of migration research – fran meissner & linnet taylor
• “dongshuxisuan” (east-to-west computing resource transfer project) in china: an evolutionary reform on data infrastructure construction – chengbao jin
• the eu and internet standards – beyond the spin, a strategic turn? – clément perarnaud

standards: norms and methods

• data walking in the unheard city: sampling infrastructured devices with mobile apps – iain emsley
• the good infrastructures lab: user agency within, through and against infrastructures – thomas berker
• standardization as ethico-political project. dealing with the tension between the value of equal quality of standards and pluriversality – paula helm

environment: maintenance and resistance

• permitting/resisting the cloud: a comparative legal analysis of community resistance to fossil fuel infrastructure and data centers – jenna ruddock
• reuse commons: a toolkit to weave generous cities – felipe schmidt fonseca
• washout! environmental synchronization and infrastructural maintenance in the northern rocky mountains – sam p. kellogg

12:30 lunch
13:30 keynote 2 – environment – svitlana matviyenko
14:30 coffee break
14:45 report presentations

• exclusionary cultures of internet governance – corinne cath
• open source software as digital infrastructure – thomas streinz

15:45 keynote 3 – geopolitics – yu hong
16:45 coffee break
17:00 afternoon panels

geopolitics: european infrastructure politics

• eu digital diplomacy – digital technologies, standards, and regulation in times of geopolitical upheaval – julian ringhof
• reaching european stars with american clouds: rooting european digital sovereignty in gaia-x – andreas baur
• the russian conflict and its impact on the web pki – alexandra dirksen

standards: network paradigms

• rearticulating the digital public good: aesthetics and technics of the fifth internet – mila samdub
• digital technologies and sustainable development: the missing link – raúl zambrano
• an overview of internet censorship in eu – vasilis ververis

infrastructural futures

• on-line federation as a sociotechnical architecture – roel roscam abbing
• towards a historical, multi-dimensional, relational model of digital infrastructure – lai yi ohlsen

18:15 closing
20:30 drinks (ot301)