critical infrastructure lab

#

talk - presentation - panel Brown Bag Session on Environment and Tech May 2025

We are at a critical threshold in our computational futures. Investment in artificial intelligence (AI) is booming, and its application across society is accelerating at an unprecedented scale. Meanwhile, we are crossing the boundaries of several life-supporting planetary systems. Devastating heat waves, storms, fires and floods remind us of how human activity impacts all life on this planet.

In this reality, a blossoming community is challenging the tech solutionist approaches from our political and industry leaders and advocates for actual change to ensure that our technologies stay within planetary boundaries. The Green Screen coalition is announcing a series of brown bag sessions to spotlight this work. We hope these sessions provide opportunities to discuss key topics on the nexus of environment and tech with experts, draw inspiration from their work, learn in the open and build pathways to sustainable futures.

Keep an eye on this page for new brown bag session

Upcoming brown bag sessions:

Data centres, AI, and responsible use

May 5, 4 – 5 PM CET
On Zoom – Register now

In this session, Jill McArdle (Beyond Fossil Fuels) will present their latest report on data centres and Europe’s energy transition and Christian Graham of (Friend of the Earth) will talk about their guide where they outline principles and practices for harnessing AI for environmental justice.

About the speakers

Jill McArdle is International Corporate Campaigner at Beyond Fossil Fuels. Her work focuses on the energy and emissions footprint of data centres, and corporate accounting for carbon emissions including the need for 24/7 renewable energy matching. Prior to joining Beyond Fossil Fuels, Jill spent 8 years working in Brussels on EU policies on sustainable corporate governance, research & innovation, access to medicines and international development. including over four years at Friends of the Earth Europe leading European and global campaigns on supply chain due diligence laws. Jill holds a PhD in philosophical theories of global justice from the University of Dublin. She is Irish, and has lived in Brussels for the last decade.

Chris Graham co-leads the Experiments team at Friends of the Earth, where he helps turn ideas into testable prototypes and explores how civil society can navigate and shape emerging futures. His path was sparked early by The Usborne Book of the Future, which planted the idea that the future is a choice – one that could be both sustainable and technologically exciting. That vision was later infused with the playful rebellion of The Monkey Wrench Gang, inspiring teenage Chris to plant over 5,000 trees with the Conservation Volunteers.

Chris’s career has spanned the industry, education, and non-profit sectors. At Friends of the Earth, he’s worked across campaigns and digital teams before settling into the Experiments team. His work blends futures thinking, community innovation, and creative use of AI to explore transformative environmental possibilities. Outside of work, Chris can often be found teaching aerial arts at his local studio in North Wales – a reminder that joy, movement, and mischief still have a place in building the future.

#

news Celebrating Earth Day 2025: Innovations from the Internet Society Foundation’s Research Grant Program April 2025

#

talk - presentation - panel The Digital and Analog Ramifications of AI at the Milton Wolf Seminar on Media & Diplomacy April 2025

#

talk - presentation - panel AI and Function Creep in the Policing of Public Space March 2025

Exploring how AI technologies reshape the boundaries of public space and security.

Organised by: Florence School of Transnational Governance

How does AI reshape the policing of public space, and what are the democratic risks of automation in law enforcement? This webinar explores the expanding role of AI in surveillance, predictive policing, and crowd control, raising urgent questions about function creep and its impact on civil liberties. Join us for a critical discussion with Gabriel Pereira, Linnet Taylor, and Fieke Jansen on the intersection of AI, policing, and democratic rights.

Speakers:

• Fieke Jansen (Critical Infrastructure Lab)

• Linnet Taylor (Tilburg University)

• Gabriel Pereira (University of Amsterdam)

Moderator: Stefania Milan (EUI)

Fieke Jansen is a postdoc researcher and a co-principal investigator with the critical infrastructure lab at the University of Amsterdam. Fieke’s research interest is to understand how the material impact of expanding infrastructures are shaping the management, distribution, and depletion of natural resources.

Gabriel Pereira is Assistant Professor in AI and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), based at the Media Studies department and the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC). His research focuses on critical studies of data, algorithms, and digital infrastructures, particularly those of algorithmic surveillance. www.gabrielpereira.net

Linnet Taylor is Professor of International Data Governance at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT). Her research focuses on digital data, representation and legitimacy, with particular attention to transnational governance issues. She led an ERC project on Global Data Justice (2018-23), aiming to develop a social-justice-informed framework for governance of data technologies on the global level.

Stefania Milan collaborates with the Chair in AI & Democracy at the Florence School of Transnational Governance (European University Institute). She is Professor of Critical Data Studies at the University of Amsterdam, and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (Harvard University).

Register here.

#

talk - presentation - panel The EuroStack Initiative: Digital Sovereignty in Europe March 2025

#

talk - presentation - panel 122th meeting of the Internet Engineer Task Force March 2025

#

interview Deciphering AI Water Consumption: How Amazon Hides How Much Water Its Cloud Consumes in Spain March 2025

In the last few years Spain has become an appealing destination for big tech companies willing to expand its physical infrastructures. Amazon Web Services (AWS), one of the world’s leaders on cloud computing and AI services, is in many senses acting as an advance. In 2022 it started to operate three new data centers in the northeast Spain through a hub that will grow into its biggest cloud region in south Europe by 2030.

While internet giants like AWS make big efforts to promote their environmental commitments with the communities where they operate, opacity keeps surrounding their use of natural resources to run their server farms. One of them, the water used for cooling down servers, is of special concern in Spain, a land in the midst of a climate emergency due to recurrent periods of droughts.

The following report, published in EL PAÍS, reveals undisclosed data and new information about the water usage and the environmental footprint of AWS facilities in Spain. It also sheds light on the lack of real accountability mechanisms by public authorities responsible to monitor these investments and its costs for the territories where new data centers are built.

Read the article here.

Descifrando el consumo de agua de la IA: así oculta Amazon cuánto bebe su nube en España

La regulación no obliga a las empresas a informar sobre los recursos usados en sus granjas de servidores. Datos obtenidos por EL PAÍS permiten estimar cuánta agua utiliza una de las instalaciones de AWS en Aragón

El aspecto exterior de cualquiera de los tres centros de datos que Amazon Web Services (AWS) opera en España desde 2022 es el propio de una base militar. Una primera valla de varios metros de altura con postes y cámaras de vigilancia protege cada una de estos complejos. Una segunda, ya dentro del recinto, confirma la sensación de seguridad extrema que rodea a estos edificios repletos de servidores.

Hace ahora dos años que Amazon, a través de su filial de servicios de computación AWS, abrió en España su primer clúster (agrupación de empresas) regional en el sur de Europa. En total, tres centros de datos separados por menos de 80 kilómetros en las provincias de Zaragoza y Huesca. En mayo pasado la empresa anunció sus planes para ampliar los tres complejos y añadir otros dos a su red, mediante un megaproyecto que la tecnológica estadounidense considera clave para su negocio global.

Pero la carrera por entrenar, alojar y ejecutar modelos de inteligencia artificial (IA) cada vez más grandes tiene un precio. Las enormes infraestructuras que los gigantes de internet se están apresurando a construir requieren unas cantidades de recursos inéditas. Entre ellos sobresale la energía, pero en contextos climáticos como el español también preocupa el uso intensivo de agua. Unos impactos medioambientales en torno a los que cada vez más voces están emitiendo señales de alarma.

Sin embargo, poner cifras a ese impacto es una tarea ardua. Las grandes tecnológicas no informan sobre cuánta energía y cuánta agua usan en sus diferentes centros de datos repartidos por el planeta. Tampoco lo hace AWS para sus complejos en los municipios aragoneses de El Burgo de Ebro, Villanueva de Gállego y Huesca.

Con el ánimo de ofrecer una foto realista de cuál es hoy la huella medioambiental de este sector en plena expansión, durante varios meses EL PAÍS ha solicitado a diferentes administraciones datos sobre la sostenibilidad de los centros de AWS en Aragón en su primer año de vida. Las respuestas obtenidas y las fuentes consultadas en esta investigación reflejan la opacidad que rodea a una industria millonaria y sedienta de recursos. Pero también la falta de mecanismos por parte de las autoridades para fiscalizar al sector privado.

Agua de abastecimiento público

Por su aspecto exterior parece que los centros de datos de Amazon en Aragón quisieran pasar desapercibidos. Aunque el tamaño de sus edificios los delata fácilmente, ninguno cuenta con grandes carteles con el nombre o el logo en forma de sonrisa que identifica a la empresa.

Ubicados en polígonos industriales con amplias parcelas vacías, los centros de El Burgo, Villanueva y Huesca cuentan con una estructura parecida hecha por grandes naves. Junto a estos edificios, que alojan a los servidores, están adosados varios tanques plateados. Dentro de ellos se almacena el agua, un elemento crítico para su buen funcionamiento.

Demasiado calor en las tripas de un centro de datos puede provocar el sobrecalentamiento de los ordenadores y un fallo en los equipos. Para evitarlo, AWS utiliza ventiladores que captan el aire del exterior y lo impulsan hacia el interior del complejo. En climas como el de Aragón el problema está en las altas temperaturas de los meses de verano, cada vez más sofocantes.

Exterior del centro de datos de Amazon Web Services (AWS) en Huesca. Imagen de Pablo Jiménez Arandia. España.

Según la documentación de la empresa, cuando en el exterior se superan los 29.4 grados se hace imprescindible activar el sistema de enfriamiento por evaporación de agua. Es entonces cuando por las tuberías de estos centros corren litros de agua tratada que llegan hasta los ventiladores responsables de la climatización. Desde su encendido en noviembre de 2022, los tres complejos están conectados a la red de abastecimiento municipal de agua potable.

A través de la ley de transparencia EL PAÍS ha solicitado a los tres municipios datos sobre la evolución reciente en el consumo de agua industrial. Únicamente el consistorio de Huesca ha ofrecido cifras. Desde el inicio de operaciones del centro de AWS, el consumo hídrico para uso industrial en la capital oscense ha aumentado anualmente en 62 millones de litros (62.000 metros cúbicos), según los datos obtenidos por este diario.

Una cifra superior a las estimaciones que la empresa publicó en los informes previos a su construcción, que pronosticaban un uso de 36 millones de litros anuales. El padrón municipal que recoge el volumen de agua para uso industrial no discrimina entre los clientes conectados a la red. Pero las fuentes locales consultadas confirman que en el periodo analizado (2021 a 2023, último año con datos) AWS fue la única industria intensiva en uso de agua que se instaló aquí.

“Un clavo más en el ataúd”

¿Son estas cifras elevadas para un territorio como Aragón? Ricardo Aliod es investigador en la Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua. Cuando se le enseñan los datos, este experto los pone en contexto frente a otras industrias muy presentes en estas tierras, como la porcina, muy demandantes de agua. O frente a cultivos agrícolas muy comunes aquí como la alfalfa y el maíz.

“Este aumento supone un uso elevado respecto a los usos urbanos. (…) Pero las cifras palidecen frente al regadío”, asegura. A continuación deja claro que cualquier uso nuevo es un problema en un territorio en situación de alto estrés hídrico, según los criterios de la UE. “Estamos consumiendo más agua de la que disponemos. Así que cualquier uso de consumo nuevo es un clavo sobre el ataúd. Es una nueva presión”, advierte.

Con todo, estos datos son solo una pequeña aproximación a cuál puede ser a día de hoy la huella hídrica real de estos centros. Las cifras obtenidas sólo corresponden al agua usada para refrigeración, pero no contemplan por ejemplo cuánta agua se utiliza para la producción de energía que precisan.

Otro punto clave ayuda a entender la dificultad para conseguir información de primera mano en torno a estas infraestructuras. Desde su aterrizaje en Aragón, AWS ha exigido a las diferentes administraciones con las que trabaja la firma de estrictos acuerdos de confidencialidad, según reconocen varios cargos públicos de la región. La firma de estos documentos es una práctica muy extendida entre las tecnológicas estadounidenses, que en ocasiones incluso impide conocer la verdadera identidad de la empresa detrás de los proyectos.

Una regulación europea en curso

EL PAÍS también ha llamado a la puerta de otras administraciones en busca de respuestas. El pasado año la Comisión Europea aprobó, como parte de su directiva de eficiencia energética, un reglamento específico sobre estas infraestructuras. La norma insta a las empresas del sector a aumentar su transparencia y pide a los Estados miembros que recopilen, directamente de los operadores, datos sobre sostenibilidad. Como su consumo total de agua o el porcentaje de fuentes renovables sobre el total de energía usada.

Sin embargo, ante una solicitud dirigida al Gobierno español para acceder a estos datos sobre las instalaciones de AWS, desde el Ejecutivo aseguran no contar con esta información. Y remiten la petición a las autoridades comunitarias. A su vez, desde el dirección general de Energía de la Comisión esgrimen el carácter confidencial de estos datos y los “intereses comerciales” en juego para no hacerlos públicos.

Este departamento trabaja hoy en la creación de una base de datos europea con la información aportada por las compañías. Grupos ecologistas han criticado que en la práctica las empresas no están hoy obligadas a ofrecer esta información, señala Fieke Jensen, investigadora de la Universidad de Amsterdam. Y que además es responsabilidad de cada Estado el nivel de transparencia que se aplica a un sector en pleno crecimiento y sobre cuyo impacto la propia Comisión ha mostrado su preocupación.

Así, estados como Países Bajos cuentan ya hoy con una plataforma pública que permite acceder a los datos aportados voluntariamente por las empresas. España carece a día de hoy de una plataforma de este tipo. Fuentes del ministerio de Transición Ecológica, a preguntas de EL PAÍS, no aclaran si está entre los planes del Ejecutivo crear un portal similar.

Exterior del centro de datos de Amazon Web Services (AWS) en Villanueva. Imagen de Pablo Jiménez Arandia.

Jensen añade un punto más para explicar las limitaciones de esta normativa. Cuando esté disponible la base de datos europea publicará datos agregados a nivel país, pero no el detalle sobre el consumo de recursos en una región concreta. Lo cual impedirá usar esta información “para crear y discutir sobre políticas locales o nacionales”, opina. “Si se publicara por ejemplo cuánta energía consumen todos los centros que hay en Ámsterdam, se podría abrir un debate público sobre el tema”.

Garantías ante un escenario límite

A apenas 20 minutos del centro de Zaragoza está el polígono de El Espartal (El Burgo). Aquí se ubica uno de los centros de Amazon en Aragón. Un trajín constante de obreros y maquinaria se mueve hoy alrededor del recinto. Detrás de las dos naves ya activas se está levantando un nuevo edificio con varios tanques anexos de gran tamaño.

En julio pasado AWS pidió al Gobierno autonómico permiso para “modificar la estrategia para la gestión del agua” en sus instalaciones. Estos cambios suponen ampliar la capacidad de los tanques de agua. Desde estas torres, que en El Burgo se han trasladado a una nueva ubicación, viaja hasta las unidades de refrigeración de aire en los meses más calurosos.

Para justificar estos cambios AWS reconoce que “el cambio climático provocará unas condiciones medioambientales cada vez más variables y extremas” en este territorio. Y que por tanto se hace imprescindible “reducir la dependencia” del suministro público ante contextos de escasez.

Una de las preguntas que sobrevuelan el megaproyecto de Amazon es qué ocurrirá en periodos de falta persistente de lluvias. “En tiempos de sequía, ¿a quién, de quién y de dónde se van a detraer los caudales necesarios para alimentar estas instalaciones?”, preguntó en junio pasado el diputado autonómico de Izquierda Unida Álvaro Sanz a la consejera de Economía.

Varios meses después Sanz asegura a EL PAÍS que todavía no ha obtenido una respuesta del Ejecutivo y critica la falta de “estimaciones serias de caudal y de las necesidad de abastecimiento de estos centros”. Tampoco, añade, de los acuerdos firmados con la empresa para garantizar los suministros en todo momento. “No se está haciendo ningún análisis serio de las necesidades de recursos ambientales que esto supone”, advierte.

Ante el evento de una hipotética sequía prolongada, fuentes del Gobierno aragonés, responsable de los permisos medioambientales del proyecto, descargan la responsabilidad de marcar las restricciones pertinentes sobre los ayuntamientos. Por su parte, desde el consistorio de Huesca —único municipio que ha respondido a las preguntas de EL PAÍS— mantienen que el suministro de agua está “asegurado” gracias a las mejoras hechas en los últimos años en la red.

Los representantes de AWS en España no han respondido a la pregunta de si los centros adaptarán su funcionamiento o tomarán alguna medida excepcional ante un escenario de este tipo. Tampoco han ofrecido datos relacionados con la sostenibilidad de sus complejos desde el inicio de operaciones.

Aurora Gómez es la impulsora de Tu Nube Seca Mi Río, un grupo activista que nació como respuesta al centro que la multinacional Meta planea construir en Castilla-la Mancha. Junto a varias entidades ecologistas más este colectivo presentó en enero una lista de alegaciones a la expansión del clúster aragonés de Amazon. Criticando, entre otros puntos, las elevadas necesidades de recursos expresadas por la compañía, pero también las dificultades para acceder a datos independientes sobre sus usos.

“Nos están negando el acceso a la información”, apunta Gómez. Para esta activista existe una “intencionalidad clara” en el cerrojo informativo que aplican las grandes empresas del sector, el cual dificulta la implicación de la sociedad civil en el debate. “Si no hay una ciudadanía informada no se puede actuar”, sentencia.

#

workshop Operationalizing Values in Dutch Digital Infrastructure February 2025

#

talk - presentation - panel The Rise of A.I. Agents in Historical Perspective February 2025

#

infrastructure walk data center walks and infrastructure walks February 2025

Join us for amateur exploration into the visibility of wireless equipment and services dotted around the city! We collectively map, observe and measure the techno-diversity of digital infrastructure in urban spaces. Data and infrastructure walks are a creative method and a social practice, which can be used to reflect on data power through critical infrastructure studies. It serves a variety of purposes, from public engagement, education, and artistic research to empirical studies.

Data center walks

We started data center walks with a simple question about how to make the invisible visible. People tend to forget about the infrastructure that lies beneath the data. For instance, the cloud remains a concept reduced to a depiction of a cloud, stripping data from its materiality. We usually do not see data centers, nor do we think about them in a material sense. By taking groups into data centers with us, we explore the resources, politics, and human labor that sustains them. To do so, we walk around and inside the data centers, observing physical traces as well as user-generated information online.

Infrastructure walks

We hold a series of “infrastructure walks” in Amsterdam and Berlin, exploring the visibility of digital infrastructures deployed in public spaces. The experience allows us to uncover data flows and to study datafication in urban areas. By engaging with the infrastructures around us, we seek to expose reconfigurations of power relations in the city through emerging technologies and protocols. Infrastructure walks address the question of what media technologies may mean “after all”, that is in the context of the life world, lived experiences and action possibilities of end users as embodied citizens. Insights can countermap the spatial control exercised through the electromagnetic spectrum in urban spaces. Often, us and the groups find that infrastructures should be (1) noticeable, (2) observable, (3) contestable or programmable to their users.

Upcoming walks and related events: Data Walk Workshop: Sensing Digital Materiality in Urban Public Spaces

Walking the infrastructure walk and dancing the frequency dance — You only see it when you get it

#

workshop mud batteries and regenerative infrastructures February 2025

The urgency of the ecological crisis is well documented and a growing field of environmental media scholars is drawing attention to the environmental harms of the internet, 5G, and generative AI. This experiment builds on the notion of biological computing to gain insight into what could be if we centre nature and not capital in the design of our infrastructures. With this, we take to heart Bill Reed’s (2007) call to action that to curb the ecological crisis we need to move beyond ‘doing things better’ and start by ‘doing better things’. The lab found that policymakers and tech companies present narrow sustainability efforts at best fall short of their promise and at worse intensify the extractive and exploitative models on which our economies are based. To develop approaches that ‘do better things’ we will experiment with powering the internet through mud batteries to design computational infrastructures that are non-extractive, restorative, and regenerative.

Making electricity with soil

We are collaborating with the artist Sunjoo Lee on the mud battery garden project. The project creatively explores the collaborative possibilities between natural ecosystems and digital infrastructure.

Mud batteries produce electricity by harnessing the metabolism of anaerobic bacteria living in wet soil, using a technology called Microbial Fuel Cells. Each container acts like a small battery, equipped with electrodes that capture electrons released by the bacteria. The garden’s plants and insects help feed the bacteria, allowing electricity to keep flowing as long as the ecosystem stays alive and thriving.

The project features a series of hands-on workshops. We build mud cells using soil and water, bury electrodes in the mud, and measure the amounts of electricity that they produce using multimeters. To explore if we can power alternative post-silicon and organic communication networks through mud batteries, organic materials, and e-waste.

Who knew dirt could be so current?!⚡

#

exhibition phase shift: the antennas and us February 2025

#

event Research Qolloquium: Where things are and aren’t – Policy logics and geopolitical anxieties in the standardisation of quantum technologies January 2025

#

talk - presentation - panel Book panel “Disconnecting sovereignty: How Data Fragmentation Reshapes the Law” by Mariavittoria Catanzariti, Humanities Labs, UvA, Amsterdam December 2024

The event will start with a presentation by the Author, followed by comments by Dr. Kristina Irion (Institute for Information Law, UvA) and Dr. Andrea Leiter (Amsterdam Center for International Law, UvA) and by a Q&A with the audience, moderated by Dr. Niels ten Oever (Department of European Studies and critical infrastructure lab, UvA).

The event is a joint initiative from the ARTES transversal clusters ‘Power and governance’ and ‘Digital networks, communications, and technologies’.

About the book:

This book explores the dynamic legal semantics of territory as applied to data. It offers a theoretical assessment of the legal challenges that data flows pose for the principle of territoriality and for state sovereignty more generally. The concept of sovereignty has traditionally developed in close connection with the exercise of powers over a territory, and ideas of jurisdiction have always been based on the principle of territoriality. Digitalization questions however the very idea of physical frontiers. Interconnected networks make data in effect borderless. Data can in fact be created, stored, processed, and accessed anytime and from anywhere.

The idea of the book is upbeat: the law can keep pace with the ability of data to fragment reality. The condition for this is that sovereignty disconnects from territory. Disconnection is not getting rid of the territory once and for all, it only means that for data alternatives to the territorial connection exist.

About the Author:

Mariavittoria Catanzariti is a Research Fellow at the Robert Shuman Centre and Assistant Professor of Legal Philosophy at University of Padua. She joined the European University Institute as Jean Monnet Fellow in 2017. Barrister in law since 2010, she obtained a PhD in Law with a special focus on Legal Philosophy and European Law from Roma Tre University in 2011 and the Italian Scientific Qualification as Associate Professor in Legal Sociology in 2018. Her main research interest revolves around the interaction of digital transformation and information society with the law. Her publications cover different legal areas such as privacy and data protection, law and technologies, human rights, and legal sociology.

Time and Date: 17:00-18:30, 18 December 2024

Location: Humanities Labs, Bushuis F0.01, Kloveniersburgwal 48 (main entrance), 1012 CX Amsterdam

#

event ARTES Research Seminar: Democracy, War and the Digital, UvA Library, Singel 425 November 2024

#

workshop Rethinking Data Centers in the Age of Scarcity, Humanities Labs, Amsterdam November 2024

#

talk - presentation - panel AI, Digital Sovereignty and Media Infrastructures in India and elsewhere November 2024

#

event Sustainable and Equitable Internet Infrastructure panels 5-7 Nov November 2024

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

#

talk - presentation - panel “Planning designs for ecosocial transitions” – Decidim Fest 2024: Ecology, Technology and Democracy, Barcelona October 2024

#

talk - presentation - panel “The Tech We Want is Sustainable for People and the Planet” – The Tech We Want Online Summit, online October 2024

#

event “Global Digital Cultures Soirée: Shifting Infrastructure Power – Critical Approaches”, Brakke Grond Cafe, Amsterdam October 2024

#

event “Empowering Sustainability, Transparency, and Regional Impact in the IT Cloud & Infrastructure Market”, Humanities Lab, University of Amsterdam October 2024

#

event “Internet in Beeld: Verleden, Heden & Toekomst”, Felix Meritis, Amsterdam (in Dutch) October 2024

#

event “Documentation in Times of Crisis”, Finissage: Really? Art and Knowledge in Time of Crisis, Framer Framed, Amsterdam September 2024

#

talk - presentation - panel Panel “Imagining spaces of governing AI infrastructures”, ECREA 2024, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia September 2024

At the 10th European Communication Conference ECREA 2024, Communication & social (dis)order, Fieke Jansen will talk about imagining spaces of governing AI infrastructures.

About the panel:

The hype around generative AI, like ChatGPT, is gaining increasing attention in media and communication research with a focus on transformations in communication and human-machine-interaction. This panel reorients these discussions towards an interrogation of the infrastructures, practices, and more-than-human relations that sustain the operations of technologies that go under the label of “AI”.

Questions that regard the socio-ecological relations and their far reaching implications to justice, environments, and infrastructures that emerge from practices of use and development of “AI” remain insufficiently discussed in media and communication studies, despite landmark work in critical data studies and Machine Learning that reveals the exploitation of resources, nature and humans caused by the production, training, and maintenance of especially so-called large language models (LLMs) (Crawford 2021; Bender et al., 2021). This work makes imperative to bring the analysis of relations between AI infrastructures, questions of sustainability and emerging forms of disorder to the core of concerns for research of digital cultures and communication.

This panel discusses AI infrastructures in relation to questions of sustainability. It explores approaches, empiric objects and the multi-valent implications of AI developments in different contexts, contributing to research on infrastructures in media and communication studies and interdisciplinary research on the socio-ecological implications of AI technologies, aspects of sustainability and global injustices.

The individual papers propose approaches to deconstruct norms embedded within AI development and application with relevance for socio-ecological justice through the application of sociological practice theory (paper 1); to analyse emergent frictions and inequalities at the intersection between transforming digital and energy infrastructures (paper 2). They also critically assess the expanding terrains of “green extractivism” of the digital industries that claim to solve sustainability issues through the application of data-intensive technologies exemplified by the case of aquaculture (paper 3) and explore spaces of governance as imagined by civil society actors that counterpose narratives of AI and efficiency (paper 4). All panel contributions demonstrate how investigating the multiple human and more-than human materialities, infrastructures, and practices that sustain AI are productive for deconstructing narratives of AI technologies, especially in relation to matters of socio-ecological justice, while also addressing questions of power, agency, inequalities, and multiple forms of disorders. The panel equally addresses media and communication research’s responsibility to conduct transformative research on AI infrastructures (paper 5), when being confronted with the need for a great socio-ecological transformation.

Please take a look at the schedule here.

More information about the conference can be found on the ECREA 2024 website.

#

event Summer school “Utopia or Dystopia: Perspectives & Choices in ICT”, SICT 2024, A doctoral school on sustainable ICT, Brussels, Belgium September 2024

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.

#

infrastructure walk “Data Walk as Method” at the Data Power Conference in Graz/Bangalore September 2024

#

call for papers Open Panel “Making 5G Matter: Transformations in Network Infrastructure and Research” at EASST-4S Conference, Amsterdam July 2024

Propose contribution!

It is clear that 5G makes a difference, but for a variety of factors it is far from settled what difference that difference makes. This combined format open panel seeks to convene new conversations about the transformations accompanying 5G, both to the information environment and network topology.

At the intersection of geopolitical struggle between global superpowers, domestic panics about viral conspiracy theories, and rapidly changing network infrastructures, 5G technology has emerged as a unique object of concern and contestation. This combined format open panel invites participants to present new research and engage in roundtable discussion on the transformations affected by the rollout of 5G devices and telecommunication networks. Such changes are broadly distributed and uniquely suited to the modalities offered by STS. They encompass global trade tensions, novel design choices by standard setters, and sustainable development goals, as well as renewed campaigns to define the place of wireless technology in contemporary society. To adequately address these transformations and the challenges they bring with them, critical scholarship on 5G must navigate between the quicksand of conspiratorial disinformation and the mirage of heavily financialized technosolutionism. This panel seeks to gather together a variety of researchers working in diverse locales on different aspects of 5G, in order to identify common obstacles, share collective insights, and advance the vocabulary of critical 5G research. Of special concern are the material contexts in which 5G technologies are situated, the workings of power in telecommunication networks, and their potentials for democratic engagement. What can the socio-technical differences 5G makes tell us about moments of transition? With this panel, we hope to make 5G matter as more than a marketing fad or lurid conspiracy theory and transform the terrain of 5G research in STS and related fields. We welcome proposals for paper presentations, workshops, and dialogue sessions.

Panel on the conference website

Conference website

#

call for papers Open Panel “Exploring, doing, and making infrastructural ideologies that center limits, reduction, and redistribution” at EASST-4S conference, Amsterdam July 2024

Propose contribution!

The world is burning, but in and from the ashes a new world will be built. A new world needs new ideologies to inform subjectivity, organization, and materiality. In this panel we will interrogate experimental approaches to infrastructural ideologies that center limits, redistribution, and reduction.

The climate crisis, planetary scarcity, human limitations, and (geo)political conflicts force us to rethink transnational communication infrastructures to overcome their extractive, colonial, and imperialist tendencies. As policymakers, researchers, citizens, artists, users, and industry, it becomes increasingly hard to know and act in and through increasingly complex, layered, and entangled networks. To ensure that new infrastructures serve the public interest and contribute to social, economic, and environmental stability, we see an urgent need to develop alternative propositions for sustainable and equitable internet and digital technologies. Specifically, in this combined open panel we are responding to the need to articulate new ideologies, set a positive agenda, to inform subjectivity, organization, and materiality. In this combined format open panel we will interrogate theoretical, empirical, and speculative approaches to infrastructural ideologies that center limits, redistribution, and reduction over extraction, profit, and capital.

Since the internet has become the scaffolding of everyday life, there is a clear need to think and build beyond the principles of openness, interconnections, and networks. Now is the time to develop and prototype narratives about internet infrastructures that center people and the planet over profit and capital. Because an ideology cannot consist of text alone, this combined open panel will combine academic presentations, with a workshop and an interactive immersive experience.

This panel builds on the open panel ‘Overcoming Sociotechnical Imaginaries: infrastructural ideologies and materialities?’ organized at 4S 2023 in Honolulu and is in conversation with a growing body of work across – but not limited to – STS, media studies, infrastructure studies, and critical internet studies.

We encourage a diversity of submissions to help think through the complexity of today and develop new ideologies. These submissions can include but are not limited to, academic papers, essays, speculative fiction, solar punk, technology, code, and artistic interventions and installations.

Panel on the conference website

Conference website

#

talk - presentation - panel Online panel discussion “Digitale soevereiniteit: zin of onzin?” July 2024

#

event 2024 Multistakeholder Meeting on Digital Sovereignty at Clingendael, The Hague (in Dutch) July 2024

#

event Digital methods summer school, University of Amsterdam July 2024

#

broadcast TV programme “What is holding us back?”, episode “Sustainable data” (in Dutch) June 2024

#

event 5G generatie. Tech denkers, Adyen – Rokin, Amsterdam June 2024

#

event Politicologenetmaal (or: Annual Political Science Workshops of the Low Countries), Maastricht University June 2024

#

talk - presentation - panel Multistakeholderism and Digital Sovereignty: Infrastructural Sanctions, the War in Ukraine, and EU Digital Sovereignty, GIG-ARTS 2024, Leiden University, Campus The Hague June 2024

#

talk - presentation - panel workshop “Re-imagining Data Infrastructures: Labour, Environment, and Solidarity” at CPDP.ai 2024 conference, Brussels May 2024

#

event Seminar “EU’s Digital Future Seminar #2: Assessing the Material Shaping of EU Digital Sovereignty in Response to the War in Ukraine” May 2024

#

vacancy PhD Position in Infrastructural Ideologies in the EU, Russia, and China May 2024

#

vacancy Postdoc Infrastructural Ideologies in the EU, Russia, and China May 2024

#

event Sanctions, Standards, and Sovereignty: Examining Power in Communication Networks with Infrastructural Ideologies, Centre Internet et Société (CIS), Paris April 2024

#

talk - presentation - panel Workshop Re-Figuration of Cyberspace – SFB 1265, Berlin April 2024

This workshop, organized by the project B02 „Control/Space“ at the Collaborative Research Center 1265 at TU Berlin, explores different spatial changes and dynamics of the Internet infrastructure using the notion of refiguration, which presents a concept of tensions between four key spatial figures and spatial logics: the place, the territory, the network, and the route. These tensions allow for the explanation of key conflicts in contemporary modernity. Conference book with full programme available.

Maxigas (critical infrastructure lab): Media ecologies, infrastructures and environments: Infrastructure walk as a methodological approach

Or, things we learned from infrastructure walks.

The critical infrastructure lab held a series of “infrastructure walks” in
Amsterdam and Berlin, exploring the visibility of digital infrastructures
deployed in public spaces. I situate the methodological approach in
relation to other practices addressing key conflicts in contemporary urban
life that immerse observers within the spatial figures and spatial logics
of urban radioscapes. Subsequently, I highlight the methodological
advantages of the infrastructural walk compared to similar approaches.
Then, I report on the empirical and theoretical results obtained from the
walks. In short, the infrastructure walk experience is a good basis for
rethinking the key concepts of media infrastructures, media environments
and media ecologies.

Industrial standards can be mobilised as an analytical grid to structure
the urban experience of radioscapes. The insights thus generated
correspond to counter-mapping the spatial control exercised over and
through the electromagnetic spectrum in urban spaces. Such work exposes
the reconfiguration of power relationships in the city through emerging
technologies and legacy protocols. Infrastructure walks address the
question of what media technologies may mean “after all”, that is in the
context of the life world, lived experiences and action possibilities of
end users as embodied citizens.

Slides download

#

event Talk “Geographical” at Expanded Publishing Fest #2 – Space-in / Space-out, OT301, Amsterdam April 2024

#

event ECP “Digital human rights”, Bleyenberg, The Hague April 2024

#

call for contributions “Reassembling the Computer Networks of Eastern and Central Europe: From the Collapse of Soviet Bloc to the Russia-Ukraine War”, Internet Histories Journal April 2024

#

talk - presentation - panel Green Clouds? Towards Sustainable Data Infrastructure, SPUI25 March 2024

#

event AI & the Climate Crisis, online March 2024

#

call for contributions “ECREA Book: AI Infrastructures and Sustainability”, Muenster University February 2024

for an Open Access publication with Palgrave as part of the ECREA Open Access Book Series

Proposal for an edited book on

AI Infrastructures and Sustainability

Deadline: 29.02.2024
Editors: Anne Mollen, Sigrid Kannengießer, Fieke Jansen, Julia Velkova

This call for contributions follows an invitation by the ECREA Open Access Book Series Committee to develop a proposal for a volume on “AI Infrastructures and Sustainability”. The Committee has invited overall three publications to develop full proposals – one of which will be selected as Open Access publication with Palgrave as part of the ECREA book series.

The proposed volume assembles research in media and communications on AI infrastructures in relation to questions of sustainability. We invite critical theoretical, historical, methodological, and empirical reflections on the “sustainability” of technologies that go under the label of “AI”. Contributions could include analyses of how sustainability, infrastructures or other related notions can be conceptualized in relation to technologies of automation – to deconstruct how AI-related narratives, imaginaries, norms, practices etc. with their ensuing implications manifest in infrastructures of automated communication. We also welcome authors to introduce new concepts that contribute to create more affective, transformative, theoretically nuanced narratives and understandings of how to make liveable relations with AI. Considering the necessity for a great socio-ecological transformation, the proposed volume also encourages reflections on transformative perspectives in media and communication research, addressing media and communication’s role in the shaping and transforming of societies increasingly becoming reliant on technologies of automation.

Submission details and expected time frame for publication

We are seeking abstracts (250-300 words, excluding references) to be submitted until February, 29 2024 to anne.mollen@uni-muenster.de addressing – but not limited to – one or more of the following topics:

Critical theoretical, conceptual, empirical, and methodological work on “AI”, infrastructures and sustainability in media and communication research
Critical discussions of sustainability, sustainability narratives and normative frameworks in relation to AI infrastructures
Imaginaries of sustainability and AI (their construction as well as resistance to it)
Human rights and digital justice implications of AI
Extractivism and AI (labour, data, resources etc.), including AI-related protest and movements
Intersectional perspectives on AI and sustainability
Resource consumption and environmental impacts of AI
Intersections of AI with local and energy politics
Market concentration, political economy, geopolitical perspectives and global distributional (in)justices in relation to AI infrastructures
Bias and discrimination in AI infrastructures, representation, and AI
Transformative and transdisciplinary perspectives on AI and sustainability

Media and communication research can contribute with nuanced, critical, and normative analyses on the socio-technical relations that make and sustain AI infrastructures. This perspective is direly needed in the discussion of AI and sustainability, which needs to be acknowledged as more than a technical concern to which technical solutions can be found. A comprehensive media and communication perspective can instead assess the manifestations, contestations, and historical continuities in the emergence of AI infrastructures while reflecting on matters of sustainability. With the proposed volume we are calling on scholars to orient discussions on automation as well as human-machine-interaction emerging in relation to media and communications towards an interrogation of the infrastructures, practices, and more-than-human relations that constitute the operations of technologies that go under the label of “AI” through the lens of sustainability.

More information here

#

talk - presentation - panel Eaten by the Internet – FUTURES Podcast Live February 2024

#

event Data is dead. Welcome to the new future of the tech industry, Spui25 February 2024

#

talk - presentation - panel Do We Really Care? Public Values and Digital Technology in the Netherlands, SPUI25 February 2024

#

event Knowledge-Driven Power in a Digitized World, Spui25 February 2024

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.

#

talk - presentation - panel Down with datacenters: developing critical policy for environmentally sustainable tech in Europe January 2024

Fieke Jansen and Corinne Cath are organizing a panel with a focus on data centers at Privacy Camp 24 in Brussels on 24 Jan. Data centers – the large windowless buildings full of server racks providing the computational power of the digital society – are increasingly at the heart of political contention in Europe. The building of hyperscalers in the Netherlands, Ireland and Spain are aided by opaque governance processes and have met resistance from local communities. These examples are indicative of a larger trend. Across Europe, large Big Tech companies are buying up land, gobbling up natural resources like water, wind, and energy, to build large-scale data centers for selling privacy-invasive services and software. Where local protests against the impending arrival of hyperscalers have been successful they have displaced its construction to other, often more vulnerable territories.

To address concerns around the energy consumption of data centers the EU is developing some guidelines to limit the tech industries’ carbon footprint– i.e. in the energy directive–and some nation-states are considering data center policy. Yet, none of these state interventions addresses the premise of infinite growth and extraction for which these data centers are built. We believe that given the growth of these data centers, a critical intervention is needed now that sets the tone for EU-wide debates on the future of the computing industry, one that centers people and planet over profit and capital.

Moderator:

Dr. Corinne Cath, postdoctoral researcher at the programmable infrastructures group (led by Dr. Seda Gürses) of the University of Delft

Speakers:

Dr. Fieke Jansen, post-doctoral researcher and co-PI critical at the infrastructure lab, University of Amsterdam
Claire Pershan, EU Advocacy Lead for the Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla
Kim van Sparrentak, MEP GroenLinks Europa, The Greens/EFA
Michelle Thorne, Director of Strategy and Partnerships at the Green Web Foundation and a co-initiator of the Green Screen Coalition

#

talk - presentation - panel Paper ‘Opening telecommunications to critical insights and public engagement’ on panel: ‘The Politics of Open Infrastructures: expanding knowledge through activist, participatory, and research-based initiatives’ at STS Austria November 2023

Opening telecommunications to critical insights and public engagement
Maxigas, Critical Infrastructure Lab, University of Amsterdam
Abstract of paper for the panel “The Politics of Open Infrastructures”

I focus on opening up programmable infrastructures to critical insights, transposing
digital methods from platforms to infrastructures, the case in point being the next gen-
eration 5G mobile phone networks. In comparison with the information infrastructures
of the Internet, telecommunications infrastructures are notoriously inaccessible. Internet
infrastructures benefit from open standards, elegant protocols, revolutionary imaginar-
ies, public debates and ample civil society engagement. In contrast, telecommunications
infrastructures are rendered inaccessible by standards processes conducted by industrial
consortia, over-engineered protocol stacks, bland visions, regulatory capture, and the
absence of digital rights activists. The convergence of Internet with telecommunica-
tions networks renders this situation increasingly problematic, because as computers
and networks merge in programmable infrastructures, the future of communication and
control will be determined by telecom companies without public debate or civil society
participation.
In order to address such a research problem and provide an adequate response to the his-
torical moment, I propose, promote and develop the “People’s 5G Laboratory”, a rebuilt
mobile phone network for parallel operation and public experiments. The purpose of
the research infrastructure is to open telecommunications to critical insights and public
engagement through the innovative methodology of “dissection”. Dissection refers to
an analytical but experimental approach to gaining a materialist understanding of the
medium in which cultures grow. While dissection has been practiced during the Dutch
Golden Age as a means to advance science, in particular anatomy, and thus medicine, it
has also been instrumental in transforming the societal norms and values, promoting en-
lightenment ideologies through public experiments and debatable spectacles. By taking
a similar approach to telecommunications standards, implementations and deployments,
the Critical Infrastructure Lab aims to inject a critique of cybernetics into contemporary
debates on emerging technologies of media and culture.

Conference Programme

#

workshop Digital Materialities and Infrastructural Futures in Smart Cities: hands-on research day November 2023

#

event How do we survive the Internet? – November 23 18:00 @ De Brakke Grond November 2023

#

event Common Sovereigns: amidst digital infrastructures November 2023

#

event Do labs have politics? November 2023

#

talk - presentation - panel Open panel “Overcoming Sociotechnical Imaginaries: Infrastructural ideologies and materialities?” at 4S conference, Hawaii November 2023

#

talk - presentation - panel Open panel “Ecological crises and the role of technologies: harm, violence, and the quest for accountabilities” at 4S conference, Hawaii November 2023

#

talk - presentation - panel Open panel “Russia’s War on Ukraine – Environments, Imperialism, Infrastructures” at 4S conference, Hawaii November 2023

#

event Eaten by the Internet: power and the future of the digital society – Oct 31st 17:30 @ Spui25 October 2023

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.

#

project a visual identity for the critical infrastructure lab October 2023

The visual identity of the critical infrastructure lab is the result of a collective thought and creation process between the lab’s co-leads Fieke Janssen, maxigas, Niels ten Oever, and the communication designer Ulrike Uhlig.

For a week, Ulrike not only observed the work of the lab, she also conducted several workshops during which several questions and subjects were researched, the two most important ones:

who are we?
how do we want people to see/feel/understand the critical infrastructure lab?

the result of these workshops produced several phrases which served as visual clues for the design. “we are a transformative and decentering force” was our most important guiding principle.

we knew we wanted to use a font family which works in print and on screen and which came with an open license. Ulrike conducted tests with several candidates, before we collectively decided to go with the Source font family (Sans, Serif, and Code Pro)

but which color would be infrastructural? some things in the design process are the fruit of hasardous reading. we talked about ingrid burrington’s “networks of new york”, and there we found the colour that we deemed infrastructural: the neon orange used to mark network equipment in the street. this colour then reminded niels and maxigas of the color coding of UTP cables which use the ‘‘25-pair color code’’ industry standard. the lab operating through three different lenses—geopolitics, environment, and standards—it seemed interesting to reuse this color code to subtly mark produced publications, a clin d’œil as well to the color coded tubes of the Parisian Centre Pompidou which can be either esthetically appreciated without explanation.

while discussing how infrastructures are temporary, how antennas work, ulrike stumbled on the evolved antenna produced for NASA using genetic algorithms. even though we strongly question cybernetic principles of optimisation, we thought it interesting to involve a process reminding us of nature into the design. even though we did not rewrite the algorithm, principally because we lacked a fitness function—a function which would test how well the antenna works—the logo of the critical infrastructure lab is based on this evolved antenna. in the digital realm, on the website, we generate a new one every time the page is loaded to remind you—and us—that infrastructures are temporary.

a comma like trait in the logotype is inviting to ask if we are talking about the critical infrastructure—pause—lab or the critical—pause—infrastructure lab? the logotype, the text in the logo, is based on the very geometrical inter font.

there are some more subtle questions being asked through the design:

on the website for example, a white trait is drawn, until we click somewhere, symbolising that when creating infrastructures, we are leaving traces—after all, it’s these traces that we interrogate in our work.
in some of the print publications you might notice that page numbers subtly move, the further one advances in the publication. again, we are decentering, transforming, and marking progress.

We published our publication pipeline as well as our website theme under the GNU GPL v3 license.

#

talk - presentation - panel “Digital infrastructures and environmental justice: policies, practices, and visions” session at AoIR conference, Philadelphia September 2023

Janna Frenzel¹, Sophie Toupin¹, Jenna Ruddock², Jen Liu³, Fieke Jansen⁴, Shawna Finnegan⁵, Jennifer Radloff⁵

¹Concordia University, Canada; ²Harvard Kennedy School, USA; ³Cornell University, USA; ⁴University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands; ⁵Association for Progressive Communication

Environmental media scholars have long drawn attention to the physicality of digital systems, situating their work as part of the infrastructural turn (Larkin, 2013; Parks & Starosielski, 2015; Star, 1999). Contrary to the prevailing “cultural imagination of dematerialization” (Starosielski, 2015), digital supply chains – from data centers to AI systems to consumer electronics – depend on minerals, water, land, labour, and energy (Crawford, 2021; Cubitt, 2016; Hogan et al., 2022). This growth-based model of digital technology is based on assumed access to resources, implicating it in the extractive global economy shaped by ongoing colonial violence (Liboiron, 2021; Spice, 2018).

Transdisciplinary scholarship on the intersection of digital technologies and the environment has looked at online organizing and digital climate change action (McLean & Fuller, 2016; Pearce et al., 2019), indigenous resistance and data sovereignty (Duarte, 2017; Kukutai & Taylor, 2016), the environmental impacts of large-scale data centers (Hogan, 2015; Velkova, 2016) and alternative social media (Laser et al., 2022), and what “responsible digitalization” could look like (Dwivedi et al., 2022). Building on already existing work that critically examines the material implications of digital infrastructures, this panel asks what environmental justice means in relation to digital technologies.

Turning against the language of revolution that too often gets leveraged by Big Tech to describe the latest “disruptive” technology that is allegedly going to solve the world’s problems (Geiger, 2020; Tabel, 2022), we foreground subversive practices, regulatory interventions, and grassroots organizing and vision building as emancipatory alternatives to a for-profit, monopolized internet. From a theory of change that seeks to understand and challenge the extractive nature of digital technology production from all angles, we shed light on reform, repair, refusal, and resistance as paths for transformation.

Zooming in on Southeast Louisiana where hundreds of petrochemical processing and manufacturing facilities are located, the first paper examines how Internet access can be reimagined in landscapes shaped by extractive economies. The paper analyzes the challenges that activist and research groups face when using Internet of things (IoT) devices for real-time environmental sensing of air quality due to underdeveloped Internet infrastructures in a region that is becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate change.

The second paper engages with the material footprint and environmental implications of computing hardware production. It looks at the “Right to Repair” as one approach that challenges corporate control over design and obsolescence of electronic devices. By comparing examples of recent legislation in the EU, India, and the US, and analyzing them through the lens of design justice and discard studies frameworks, it argues that Right to Repair needs to be complemented by a substantial change in industry norms and practices rather than simply attempting to delay the disposal through repair by consumers.

The third paper examines community resistance to data centers in the United States. In the past years, activists have framed their resistance to data centers along three critiques, namely noise pollution, resource consumption, and lack of public input to permitting processes. The paper investigates how environmental justice activists use formal legal and regulatory processes such as public meetings, petitions, lawsuits, public records requests to organise against new data center developments, and the challenges they meet as part of their organising.

The fourth paper presents a “feminist principle of the internet on the environment” that was developed over several years in transnational collaborative work by practitioners. It addresses the interconnections between gendered online violence against land and environmental defenders on large social media platforms and on-the-ground resistance to extractive industries and outlines a new emancipatory vision for a different internet that centers planetary care and justice for communities and ecosystems.

The fifth paper presents an analysis of the Internet Architecture Board’s (IAB) workshop on “Environmental Impact of Internet Applications and Systems”, held online in December 2022. It uses an infrastructural lens to analyze which politics are embedded and missing from industry responses to the sector’s environmental harms. While international regulatory bodies are slowly coming to terms with the environmental impacts of distributed digital networks, the paper argues that the proposed sustainability solutions are as of yet too narrow in scope.

https://www.conftool.org/aoir2023/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=328#paperID183

#

talk - presentation - panel “Infrastructural Insecurity: Geopolitics in the Standardization of Telecommunications Networks” presentation at AoIR conference, Philadelphia September 2023

#

exhibition frictions and frequencies by weise7 September 2023

#

event NL IGF event – “Future-Proof Internet Governance: The Power of Multistakeholder Collaboration” September 2023

#

workshop Workshop on international standard-setting for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Interior Affairs, and Economic Affairs and Climate September 2023

#

talk - presentation - panel “Dialectics of hacking” book launch August 2023

#

workshop Hack Smart Cities August 2023

#

talk - presentation - panel 5G networks and the public interest August 2023

#

talk - presentation - panel The People’s 5G Network July 2023

#

workshop infrastructural imaginaries workshop – montenegro July 2023

#

event Standards, Protocols, Ecosystem roundtable June 2023

#

workshop green screen climate justice and digital rights workshop – costa rica June 2023

#

talk - presentation - panel the global harms of powering ai – towards a sustainable future of data use and governance @cpdp May 2023

#

workshop digital green society – serbia May 2023

#

talk - presentation - panel Exploring Protocols & Interoperability to Support a People-Centered Digital Future May 2023

#

event launch event programme March 2023

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)

#

exhibition antennas and us – exhibit at the amsterdam public library February 2023

#

talk - presentation - panel politics of (dis)connection February 2023

#

call for papers launch event January 2023

you can find the schedule here

executive summary / tl;dr

the critical infrastructure lab launches on april 13-14, 2023 at the university of amsterdam
send in your session proposals for interactive workshops on april 13th (the lab day)
send in your extended abstracts (academics) or position statements (practitioners) for the panel sessions on april 14th (the research day)
send submissions to submission@criticalinfralab.net by march 1st (750-1000 words)

°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°°º¤ø,¸,ø¤°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°
“infrastructure makes worlds” — ned rossiter
°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°°º¤ø,¸,ø¤°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°

dear colleague, friend, comrade,

communications infrastructures constitute the invisible scaffolding of social life. largely concealed to their end-users, they are becoming the main stage where local and global economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical conflicts are played out. once established, infrastructures shape societies for decades to come.

on the 13th and 14th of april we will launch the critical infrastructure lab to discuss and develop visions of how communication infrastructures can serve the public interest — and we want to do that with you!

work in the critical infrastructure lab will focus on the development of new infrastructural futures that center people and planet over profit and capital. hosted at the university of amsterdam and led by fieke jansen, niels ten oever, and maxigas, the lab will bring together activists, advocates, scholars, policymakers, and industry actors. three analytical lenses of standards, geopolitics and environment will be applied to built an evidence base, investigate and develop infrastructural imaginaries, and create actionable research for infrastructures that serve the public interest.

about the launch event
the two-day event at the university of amsterdam will take place on the 13th and 14th of april. it will be a mix of keynote speakers, hands-on workshops, infrastructure walks, and panel discussions. both days will be in person, but day 1 will be streamed. for both days, we invite session proposals from activists, advocates, scholars, policymakers, and industry.

day zero, 13th of april, will be a hands-on lab day. it will offer space for interactive sessions on geopolitics, environment, and standards. we invite proposals for sessions of 2.5 hours. for instance, workshops, infrastructure walks, policy challenges, simulations, etc. pretty much everything that is not a panel or paper presentation.

day one, 14th of april, will have a more academic structure. it will kick off with three keynote presentations followed by panel sessions. the keynote speakers – ksennia ermoshina, svitlana matviyenko, and yu hong – will inspire and challenge us. the keynotes are followed by corinne cath, who will present her research on exclusionary cultures of internet governance.

the afternoon will be dedicated to simultaneous panel sessions in the areas of infrastructure and geopolitics, infrastructure and environment, and infrastructure and standards. academics can submit an extended abstract (research question, theory/literature, method, data, preliminary findings) and practitioners can submit a position statement. these contributions should be between 750 and 1000 words.

want to submit
do you have an idea you want to workshop, a discussion you want to host, or some research that you want to present?

state clearly in an email:

your name and affiliation,
whether you are submitting for day zero or day one,
the research area (infrastructure and geopolitics, infrastructure and environment, or infrastructure and standards)
include an abstract, position statement or a blurb for an interactive session!

send your submission to submission@criticalinfralab.net by march 1st.

the lab and its research is supported by the ford foundation, the internet society foundation, and omidyar network.

#

workshop giganet’s workshop on internet standard setting research methods January 2023

#

talk - presentation - panel infrastructural distortion and possession December 2022

#

infrastructure walk infrastructure walk berlin – september 2022 September 2022

#

infrastructure walk Walking the infrastructure walk and dancing the frequency dance — You only see it when you get it April 2022

This post was written by Jeroen Matthijs de Vos, Niels ten Oever, and Maxigas. This event is a collaboration between the UvA, the Amsterdam municipality, and the ObA, it was made possible by Global Digital Cultures and IN-SIGHT.it (grant MVI.19.032 as part of the MVI programme).

The IN-SIGHT.it People’s 5G Lab, together with the Amsterdam public library, organised a so-called “infrastructure walk” at the Bijlmer ArenA on Saturday, March 26. The goal of the walk was to uncover data flows in the city (Parks & Starosielski, 2015). Twenty-two people joined the walk to study datafication in urban areas.

Figure 1: “Johan Cruyff once said: ‘You only get it when you see it’” by Maxigas, CC0

In the walk, participants used their eyes, ears, binoculars, spectrum analysers, and smartphones apps to see how people- and data-flows are organised within public spaces and in the context of the built environment. The Dutch football player-philosopher Johan Cruyff (Figure 1) once said: “You only get it when you see it.” In line with this aphorism, the participants in the infrastructure sought “to get” the logics of infrastructural and architectural control.

A “Digital Perimeter” has been established around the Johan Cruyff stadium in preparation for the Eurocup in 2019 with the aim to “make people feel safer in crowds.” This digital control zone is a public-private partnership with the collaboration of the Amsterdam ArenA, the Amsterdam municipality, the Dutch police, and TNO. Part of the project was the experimental roll-out of 5G networks, which drew the attention of our research group to the site.

Figure 2: “A handout was created” by Maxigas, CC0

Before the infrastructure walk took place, the organisers conducted several field surveys to map out the routers, devices, antennas, cameras, gates, and sensors that enable connectivity, safety services and facilitate crowd control within the area. A handout (Figure 2) was created with an overview of devices and a list of radio-magnetic frequencies on which those devices operate. During the infrastructure walk, the participants relied on these clues to look for devices, identify their make and model, and make informed guesses about their purpose and ownership. The group discussed how they work, and who has access to these data flows.

The impromptu analysis by the participants shows a complex layering of telecommunications protocols in use within the surroundings. We found 4G, 5G, WiFi, DECT, Bluetooth, C2000 (emergency services) networks, owned and operated by a variety of stakeholders including mobile communication providers, the police, the municipality, and the Amsterdam ArenA. A poster (Figure 3) of the Dutch Frequency Landscape as well as the website antennekaart.nl helped to map out who has access to which data, and what the capabilities of these radio devices are.

Figure 3: “A poster of the Dutch Frequency Landscape” Agentschap Telecom, All rights reserved

Police officers on patrol also took a keen interest in the ongoing investigations. We learned that while it is accepted for many different institutions to observe the general public, the reverse, also known as “sousveillance” (Mann, Nolan, & Wellman, 2018), is not generally accepted. Only when the organisers disclosed their affiliation with the University of Amsterdam and the Public Library could they resume their research. This echoes the stark reality of spectrum allocations and frequency licensing: the electro-magnetic spectrum is an inherent part of public space, yet very narrow frequency bands are allocated for free public use. With the advent of the next generation mobile networks such as 5G, telecommunication providers ask for more spectrum exclusively allocated to them, mediating even more data flows.

The participants reflected on the city where public space is shaped by the requirements of the telecom industry and crowd control. Technological progress means that many new devices are introduced into the built environment, such as those that count the amount of people in spaces, a technique that becomes ever more granular each decade. For example, participants found old devices dating back to the 1960s space age, that count people by using lasers (Figure 4), whereas new devices are capable of more complex and sometimes controversial technologies such as facial recognition begging the question whether new is always better.

Figure 4: “Old devices dating back to the 1960s space age, that count people by using lasers” by Maxigas, CC

A main point of interest has been the particular ways these data infrastructures looked in the context of the built environment, and how their institutional owners informed the public about their purpose and mission, especially in terms of being open to dialogue. It proved surprisingly cumbersome to use the phone numbers that are supposed to inform people about surveillance. Stickers below the aforementioned Public Eye cameras rang at the general help desk of the Amsterdam municipality. When this number was called the operator responded that “this is not a tourist service“. Similarly, street signs advising on surveillance cameras used by the police also point to the general phone number for police inquiries. Finally, the Amsterdam ArenA itself does not provide any particular information about the use of CCTV, antennas, or systems outside the arena — at least not that we encountered.

At the end of the walk, the participants mapped out their findings on a public display (Figure 5). This started discussions on improving the public communication about data infrastructures in public spaces. The People’s 5G Lab will follow up on these ideas in our next engagements with citizens and policy makers.

Figure 5: “Participants mapped out their findings on a public display” by Maxigas, CC

The infrastructure walk shows how infrastructure tends to “fade into the woodwork” (Star & Bowker, 2006), but that careful and persistent visual observation, frequency spectrum analysis, field interviews and desktop research can make it visible, and lead to hard questions about accountability and the use of public space.

References

Mann, S., Nolan, J., & Wellman, B. (2018). Sousveillance: Inventing and using wearable computing devices for data collection in surveillance environments. In T. Mohanan & D. Muramaki Wood (Eds.), Surveillance studies: A reader (pp. 347–350). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Parks, L., & Starosielski, N. (Eds.). (2015). Signal traffic: Critical studies of media infrastructures. The geopolitics of information. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Star, S. L., & Bowker, G. C. (2006). How to infrastructure. In L. A. Lievrouw & S. Livingstone (Eds.), The handbook of new media (Updated Student Edition., pp. 230–245). London: Sage.

#

infrastructure walk 5g infrastructure walk amsterdam, bijlmer arena April 2022

#

project cross platform analysis on 5g and conspiracy interpretative frames December 2021

#

past activities

talk - presentation - panel Brown Bag Session on Environment and Tech May 2025

Upcoming brown bag sessions:

Data centres, AI, and responsible use

news Celebrating Earth Day 2025: Innovations from the Internet Society Foundation’s Research Grant Program April 2025

talk - presentation - panel The Digital and Analog Ramifications of AI at the Milton Wolf Seminar on Media & Diplomacy April 2025

talk - presentation - panel AI and Function Creep in the Policing of Public Space March 2025

talk - presentation - panel The EuroStack Initiative: Digital Sovereignty in Europe March 2025

Opening talk

Panellists

Moderator

talk - presentation - panel 122th meeting of the Internet Engineer Task Force March 2025

interview Deciphering AI Water Consumption: How Amazon Hides How Much Water Its Cloud Consumes in Spain March 2025

Descifrando el consumo de agua de la IA: así oculta Amazon cuánto bebe su nube en España

Agua de abastecimiento público

“Un clavo más en el ataúd”

Una regulación europea en curso

Garantías ante un escenario límite

workshop Operationalizing Values in Dutch Digital Infrastructure February 2025

talk - presentation - panel The Rise of A.I. Agents in Historical Perspective February 2025

infrastructure walk data center walks and infrastructure walks February 2025

workshop mud batteries and regenerative infrastructures February 2025

exhibition phase shift: the antennas and us February 2025

event Research Qolloquium: Where things are and aren’t – Policy logics and geopolitical anxieties in the standardisation of quantum technologies January 2025

talk - presentation - panel Book panel “Disconnecting sovereignty: How Data Fragmentation Reshapes the Law” by Mariavittoria Catanzariti, Humanities Labs, UvA, Amsterdam December 2024

event ARTES Research Seminar: Democracy, War and the Digital, UvA Library, Singel 425 November 2024

workshop Rethinking Data Centers in the Age of Scarcity, Humanities Labs, Amsterdam November 2024

talk - presentation - panel AI, Digital Sovereignty and Media Infrastructures in India and elsewhere November 2024

Technological Sovereignty in Media Infrastructures: Indigenous 5G Networks in India

event Sustainable and Equitable Internet Infrastructure panels 5-7 Nov November 2024

talk - presentation - panel “Planning designs for ecosocial transitions” – Decidim Fest 2024: Ecology, Technology and Democracy, Barcelona October 2024

talk - presentation - panel “The Tech We Want is Sustainable for People and the Planet” – The Tech We Want Online Summit, online October 2024

event “Global Digital Cultures Soirée: Shifting Infrastructure Power – Critical Approaches”, Brakke Grond Cafe, Amsterdam October 2024

event “Empowering Sustainability, Transparency, and Regional Impact in the IT Cloud & Infrastructure Market”, Humanities Lab, University of Amsterdam October 2024

event “Internet in Beeld: Verleden, Heden & Toekomst”, Felix Meritis, Amsterdam (in Dutch) October 2024

event “Documentation in Times of Crisis”, Finissage: Really? Art and Knowledge in Time of Crisis, Framer Framed, Amsterdam September 2024

talk - presentation - panel Panel “Imagining spaces of governing AI infrastructures”, ECREA 2024, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia September 2024

event Summer school “Utopia or Dystopia: Perspectives & Choices in ICT”, SICT 2024, A doctoral school on sustainable ICT, Brussels, Belgium September 2024

infrastructure walk “Data Walk as Method” at the Data Power Conference in Graz/Bangalore September 2024

call for papers Open Panel “Making 5G Matter: Transformations in Network Infrastructure and Research” at EASST-4S Conference, Amsterdam July 2024

call for papers Open Panel “Exploring, doing, and making infrastructural ideologies that center limits, reduction, and redistribution” at EASST-4S conference, Amsterdam July 2024

talk - presentation - panel Online panel discussion “Digitale soevereiniteit: zin of onzin?” July 2024

Programma

event 2024 Multistakeholder Meeting on Digital Sovereignty at Clingendael, The Hague (in Dutch) July 2024

event Digital methods summer school, University of Amsterdam July 2024

broadcast TV programme “What is holding us back?”, episode “Sustainable data” (in Dutch) June 2024

event 5G generatie. Tech denkers, Adyen – Rokin, Amsterdam June 2024

event Politicologenetmaal (or: Annual Political Science Workshops of the Low Countries), Maastricht University June 2024

talk - presentation - panel Multistakeholderism and Digital Sovereignty: Infrastructural Sanctions, the War in Ukraine, and EU Digital Sovereignty, GIG-ARTS 2024, Leiden University, Campus The Hague June 2024

talk - presentation - panel workshop “Re-imagining Data Infrastructures: Labour, Environment, and Solidarity” at CPDP.ai 2024 conference, Brussels May 2024

event Seminar “EU’s Digital Future Seminar #2: Assessing the Material Shaping of EU Digital Sovereignty in Response to the War in Ukraine” May 2024

vacancy PhD Position in Infrastructural Ideologies in the EU, Russia, and China May 2024

vacancy Postdoc Infrastructural Ideologies in the EU, Russia, and China May 2024

event Sanctions, Standards, and Sovereignty: Examining Power in Communication Networks with Infrastructural Ideologies, Centre Internet et Société (CIS), Paris April 2024

talk - presentation - panel Workshop Re-Figuration of Cyberspace – SFB 1265, Berlin April 2024

event Talk “Geographical” at Expanded Publishing Fest #2 – Space-in / Space-out, OT301, Amsterdam April 2024

event ECP “Digital human rights”, Bleyenberg, The Hague April 2024

call for contributions “Reassembling the Computer Networks of Eastern and Central Europe: From the Collapse of Soviet Bloc to the Russia-Ukraine War”, Internet Histories Journal April 2024

talk - presentation - panel Green Clouds? Towards Sustainable Data Infrastructure, SPUI25 March 2024

About the speakers

event AI & the Climate Crisis, online March 2024

call for contributions “ECREA Book: AI Infrastructures and Sustainability”, Muenster University February 2024

talk - presentation - panel Eaten by the Internet – FUTURES Podcast Live February 2024

event Data is dead. Welcome to the new future of the tech industry, Spui25 February 2024

talk - presentation - panel Do We Really Care? Public Values and Digital Technology in the Netherlands, SPUI25 February 2024

event Knowledge-Driven Power in a Digitized World, Spui25 February 2024

talk - presentation - panel Down with datacenters: developing critical policy for environmentally sustainable tech in Europe January 2024

talk - presentation - panel Paper ‘Opening telecommunications to critical insights and public engagement’ on panel: ‘The Politics of Open Infrastructures: expanding knowledge through activist, participatory, and research-based initiatives’ at STS Austria November 2023

workshop Digital Materialities and Infrastructural Futures in Smart Cities: hands-on research day November 2023

event How do we survive the Internet? – November 23 18:00 @ De Brakke Grond November 2023

event Common Sovereigns: amidst digital infrastructures November 2023

event Do labs have politics? November 2023

talk - presentation - panel Open panel “Overcoming Sociotechnical Imaginaries: Infrastructural ideologies and materialities?” at 4S conference, Hawaii November 2023

talk - presentation - panel Open panel “Ecological crises and the role of technologies: harm, violence, and the quest for accountabilities” at 4S conference, Hawaii November 2023

talk - presentation - panel Open panel “Russia’s War on Ukraine – Environments, Imperialism, Infrastructures” at 4S conference, Hawaii November 2023

event Eaten by the Internet: power and the future of the digital society – Oct 31st 17:30 @ Spui25 October 2023

About the speakers

project a visual identity for the critical infrastructure lab October 2023

talk - presentation - panel “Digital infrastructures and environmental justice: policies, practices, and visions” session at AoIR conference, Philadelphia September 2023