critical infrastructure lab

bi- weekly thursday session 16:00 – 17:00 cet (once every two weeks)
facilitated by niels@criticalinfralab.net

meet up here: https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/6365963924

june 1 the closed world pp. ix – 74
june 15 the closed world pp.75 – 146
june 29 the closed world pp. 147 – 208
july 13 the closed world pp. 209 – 274
july 27 the closed world pp. 275 – 365
august 10 discuss the closed world with paul edwards
august 24 technologies of speculation pp. 1 – 52
september 7 technologies of speculation pp. 53 – 113
september 21 technologies of speculation pp. 114 – 155
october 5 technologies of speculation pp. 156 – 202
october 19 discuss technologies of speculation with sun-ha hong
november 2 how not to network a nation pp. ix – 56
november 16 how not to network a nation pp. 57 – 106
november 30 how not to network a nation pp. 107 – 158
december 7 how not to network a nation pp. 159 – 206
december 21 discuss how not to network a nation with benjamin peters
january 4 start reading balkan cyberia ?

sign up for the mailinglist here:
https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/infrastructure-readinggroup

previous books read in this reading group:

• four internets – kieron o’hara & wendy hall
• what is wrong with rights – radha d’souza
• digital design and topological control – parisi
• golden age of analog – galloway
• countering the cloud – luke munn
• medium design – keller easterling
• reluctant power – rita zajác
• between truth and power – julie cohen
• the question concerning technology in china – yuk hui

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

meet up here: https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/5689070082

september 5th: after geoengineering: climate tragedy, repair, and restoration introduction
september 12th: after geoengineering: climate tragedy, repair, and restoration part i. cultivation (chapter 1)
september 26th: after geoengineering: climate tragedy, repair, and restoration part i. cultivation (chapter 2 – 3)
october 10th: after geoengineering: climate tragedy, repair, and restoration part ii. burial (chapter 4 – 5)
october 24th: after geoengineering: climate tragedy, repair, and restoration part iii. the after- zero society (chapter 6 – 8)
november 7th: after geoengineering: climate tragedy, repair, and restoration part iv. buying time (chapter 9 – 10)
november 21th: discard studies. wasting, systems, and power (chapter 1 and 2)
december 5th: discard studies. wasting, systems, and power (chapter 3 and 4)

december 19th: discard studies. wasting, systems, and power (chapter 5)

sign up for the mailinglist here:
https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/environment-readinggroup

reading collection. what we have read thusfar: pollution is colonialism, myth of green capitalism, from moore’s law to the carbon law, situating solarities, solar materialisms, and decolonial and feminist solarities, the value of a whale.

Open panel at the annual meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, the professional society of Science and Technology scholars.

The concept of sociotechnical imaginaries is very popular in STS research, yet we suggest that has reached the limits of its explanatory powers. Sociotechnical imaginaries insufficiently account for power imbalances in the design, standardisation, production, and maintenance of infrastructures and their governing institutions. To overcome this problem, we invite contributions that foreground power and technological materiality, and do not solely, or mainly, take identities, opinions, and visions as a starting point for arguments. Technological materialities are not merely a reflection of aligned interests, expertises, or identities. Material affordances of technology can subvert the influence of actors. Such a process is not necessarily intentional, but can emerge in the use and maintenance of a technology. The concept of ideology can explain who exerts power, how such power is exerted and subverted, and what is at stake in social conflicts around material configurations. We build on Althusser and Humphrey in saying that ideology is not simply a linguistic phenomenon; it also appears in material structures, discourses, institutions, and practices. We want to further explore what this notion can do to explain how social conflicts are articulated through struggles over shaping materiality, often under the guise of a (co-)production process. We call for contributions from researchers who are interested in exploring conceptual frameworks that can better account for the role of materiality and power in the social conflicts around technological innovation, standardisation, deployment, and maintenance, including but not limited to renewed interest in ideology as a conceptual framework.

Open panel at the annual meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, the professional society of Science and Technology Studies scholars.

Political and industrial narratives present technology as the solution to the multiple ecological crises society is confronted with, without engaging with the material consequences in terms of minerals, land, labour, and energy (Crawford, 2021; Cubitt, 2016; Hogan et al., 2022). As Dr. Max Liboiron traces out in ‘Pollution is Colonialism’ (2021), extraction and pollution are legitimated through threshold theories of harm, which set arbitrary limits on harmful practices and allow ‘acceptable’ amounts of pollution to continue. Liboiron demonstrates how this approach to managing harms obscures the institutions and actors that perpetrate violence in the first place, foreclosing possibilities to resist and transform power relations. With this open panel, we invite contributions that engage with Liboiron’s call to move from ‘a question of harm that asks ‘how much’ … to ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions about violence’ (Liboiron 2021). We bring this question to the context of digital technologies and their social and environmental implications, asking what such a switch of perspective might look like with regard to ‘Big Tech’ monopolies, the distributedness and scales of networked computing infrastructures, and their entanglements with extractive industries (c.f. Arboleda 2020). How can systemic violence and questions of accountability be addressed in this context? Contributions can range from papers unpacking how a narrow economic lens on climate change (‘green capitalism’) perpetuates violence; to explorations of research methodologies putting feminist, anticolonial, critical race, and solidarity epistemologies into practice; to projects that develop alternative sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim 2015) for the principles that organise internet infrastructures.

Open panel at the annual meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, the professional society of Science and Technology Studies scholars.

The Russian aggression against Ukraine and the violation of its people and territories have a long history. Situated between a number of colonial powers, Ukraine and its people were imaged and imagined as a component of material exchange, while the anti-imperial resistance is systematically ignored. In this panel, we question the material consequences of the war in Ukraine, the imperial forces at work, and the resistance against them. We want to explore different angles of the conflict through theoretical concepts and the analysis of the material conditions. For instance, the production of terror environments (Matviyenko), resourcification (Bazdyrieva, Richardson), erasure as a tool of imperialism (Tsymbalyuk), etc. We invite contributions that explore and expose the socio-material aspects of the war across topographies and topologies, such as sea (through gas pipelines, submarine cables, and bridges), sky (through satellites and drones), and land (electrical grids and trenches). The long-term slow and fast violence against the people and environment of Ukraine shapes an ecology that is not just endangering people or/and the ecology itself, but the ability to recognize subjectivity and agency at the “peripheries” of imperial powers. This panel aims to bring to the fore different kinds of spatial, environmental, and ideological reconfigurations that have led to the current moment. We aim to center Ukrainian scholars and their experiences, while also inviting other scholars to contribute.

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

How does capitalism integrate hackers? Can hacking flourish outside capitalism? Why anti-capitalist movements need hackers? What connects hackers’ movements, scenes and projects to past and future struggles against capital?

Launch of monograph Resistance to the current: the dialectics of hacking in MIT Press’ Information Policy series in a session at the Chaos Communication Camp.

Session at the Chaos Communication Camp

Session at the Chaos Communication Camp

Presentation and discussion at the tbd.camp hacker convention on the politics of 5G standardisation, implementation and deployment.

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

Artificial Intelligence relies on data. Currently, we see a “bigger is better” mentality in both AI research and AI business models. This leads to ever more complex AI systems and massive data sets. But are they sustainable? Currently, the ensuing environmental, social and economic harms are ignored both by established data governance regimes and regulatory approaches such as the DSA/DMA, Data Act or AI Act. We have yet to find data governance approaches that adequately respond to the unsustainability of extractivist AI data collection and data processing and their underlying technical infrastructures. In this panel, we will discuss the global harms of AI systems and shortcomings of established data governance approaches, as well as new ideas for regulations geared towards more sustainable data governance and AI policies in an age where Artificial Intelligence is becoming a general-purpose technology.

the global harms of powering ai – towards a sustainable future of data use and governance @computers, privacy, and data protection (cpdp). View the panel here.

THE GREEN/DIGITAL/SOCIETY is a conference that gathers key actors who discuss the ecology, technology, human rights and policy in europe. see more: digital green society

Talk at workshop organised by the Missing Layers collaborative and Open Future, bringing together academia, civil society, and industry players.

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)

exhibit at the amsterdam public library (centre location), november 2022 – february 2023.

together with weise7 we organized an exhibit called ‘antennas and us’ in the amsterdam public library to show the invisible workings of telecommunications networks, and beamforming in particular. the exhibition runs from november 2022 until march 2023.

also shown at the exhibition are the low tech guides against high tech surveillance created by fieke jansen in collaboration with design collective idiotēs. use these low tech guides to become a digital explorer in your own city. see your neighborhood in a new light while exploring issues around facial recognition, thermal imaging, and wi-fi tracking.

The possible establishment of a sovereign internet in Russia, European initiatives on ‘Digital Sovereignty’, and the conflict between China and the United States over Huawei equipment are rekindling the discussion on splinternets and the limits to global interconnectivity. This is an online event and is co-organized by Giganet.

Can the internet, the original network of networks, resist the contemporary strain, or was it built to accommodate these differences? In this talk three expert scholars on this topic, Daniel Lambach, Francesca Musiani and Fernanda Rosa, will give their views on the politics of global connection, its limitations, its future, and its discontent. Their talks will be discussed by one of the founders and prominent researchers of the fields of internet governance, Milton Mueller.

recording: politics of (dis)connection

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)

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“infrastructure makes worlds” — ned rossiter
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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.

This workshop showcases the broad range of research methods used by Internet governance scholars from multiple disciplines to study Internet standard-setting bodies, such as the IETF, IEEE, W3C, WHATWG, 3GPP, ITU-T, ITU-R. more information and recording: https://www.giga-net.org/12-january-2022-giganets-workshop-on-internet-standard-setting-research-methods/

recording: infrastructural distortion and possession

podcast about our infrastructure walk in berlin

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. report about our infrastructure walk in amsterdam

How Interpretative Frames are Co-articulated on Social Media? An Instagram versus Parler Case Study @digital methods initiative winterschool 2021

cross platform analysis on 5g and conspiracy interpretative frames

This workshop aims to enable engineers and researchers alike to mine the IETF’s data sources in order to explore trends through the analysis of IETF data, such as email archives, I-Ds, RFCs, and the datatracker. This work can be used to derive insights into the inner workings of the process of standardization, participation, and governance. This workshop aims to bring together people who have already analyzed IETF data, those who are interested in the analysis of IETF data, and those who are interested in the results of such analysis as input for improvement of the IETF’s work. Read more: https://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/aid/