open reading group infrastructure reading group
bi- weekly tuesday 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
take notes here: https://pad.criticalinfralab.net/unz6CPM9SpieqIlkXf-Oqg
sign up for the mailinglist here (don’t forget to click the link in the confirmation email):
https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/infrastructure-readinggroup
April 2 author discussion with Peters, Petrov, and Sun-Ha Hong
April 16 – May 14 break (suggestion: read The Smartness Mandate)
May 28 – News from Germany & Technology of Empire // Introduction + Chapter 1
June 11 – News from Germany & Technology of Empire // Chapter 2
June 25 – News from Germany & Technology of Empire // Chapter 3
July 9 – News from Germany & Technology of Empire // Chapter 4
July 23 – News from Germany & Technology of Empire // Chapter 5
August 6 – News from Germany & Technology of Empire // Chapter 6
August 20 – News from Germany & Technology of Empire // Chapter 7
September 3 – News from Germany & Technology of Empire // Chapter 8
September 17 – News from Germany & Technology of Empire // Chapter 9
October 1st – News from Germany & Technology of Empire // Chapter 10
October 15th – News from Germany & Technology of Empire // Conclusion
October 29th – Telegraphic Imperialism – Introduction + Chapter 1 // The Apple II Age – Introduction
November 12th – Telegraphic Imperialism – Chapter 2 // The Apple II Age – Chapter 1
November 26th – Telegraphic Imperialism – Chapter 3 // The Apple II Age – Chapter 2
December 10th – Telegraphic Imperialism – Chapter 4 // The Apple II Age – Chapter 3
December 24th – Telegraphic Imperialism – Chapter 5 // The Apple II Age – Chapter 4
January 7th, 2025- Telegraphic Imperialism – Chapter 6 // The Apple II Age – Chapter 5
January 21st – Telegraphic Imperialism – Chapter 7 // The Apple II Age – Chapter 6
February 4th – Telegraphic Imperialism – Chapter 8 + Conclusion // The Apple II Age – Chapter 7
February 18th – The Apple II Age – Inconclusions + Epilogue
March 4th – European Objects – Chapter 1 and 2
March 18th – European Objects – Chapter 3 and 4
April 1st – European Objects – Chapter 5 and 6
April 15th – European Objects – Chapter 7 and 8
April 29th – European Objects – Conclusion
previous books read in this reading group:
- balkan cyberia – viktor petrov
- how not to network a nation – benjamin peters
- technologies of speculation – sun-ha hong
- the closed world – paul edwards
- four internets – kieron o’hara & wendy hall
- what is wrong with rights – radha d’souza
- digital design and topological control – parisi
- golden age of analog – galloway
- countering the cloud – luke munn
- medium design – keller easterling
- reluctant power – rita zajác
- between truth and power – julie cohen
- the question concerning technology in china – yuk hui
open reading group environment reading group
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
january 30 discard studies. wasting, systems, and power (chapter 5) and An alternative planetary future? Digital sovereignty frameworks and the decolonial option by Sebastián Lehuedé
february 13 ‘Socialism is not just Built for a Hundred Years’: Renewable Energy and Planetary Thought in the Early Soviet Union (1917–1945)
february 27 Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Intro) and The Security–Sustainability Nexus: Lithium Onshoring in the Global North
march 12 Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (chapter 2 & 3)
march 26 Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (chapter 4 & 5)
april 9 Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (chapter 6)
april 23 The Internet Shutdown and Revolutionary Politics: Defining the Infrastructural Power of the Internet
may 7 The world wide web of carbon: Toward a relational footprinting of information and communications technology’s climate impacts
sign up for the mailinglist here and add you reading suggestions here.
what we have read thusfar:
pollution is colonialism by Max Liboiron
myth of green capitalism by Katharina Pistor
from moore’s law to the carbon law by Daniel Pargman, Aksel Biørn-Hansen, Elina Eriksson, Jarmo Laaksolaht, Markus Robèrt
solarities; seeking energy justice by After Oil Collective
the value of a whale by Adrienne Buller
after geoengineering: climate tragedy, repair, and restoration by Holly Jean Buck
against crisis epistemology by kyle whyte
vacancy PhD Position in Infrastructural Ideologies in the EU, Russia, and China May 2024
Are you looking for a challenging position in a dynamic setting? The Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational and European Studies (ARTES) currently has a vacant PhD position as part of the critical infrastructure lab, led by main researcher Niels ten Oever, PhD. ARTES is one of the five Research Schools within the Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research (AIHR).
What are you going to do?
You will write a PhD thesis under the supervision of Dr. Niels ten Oever. You will use advanced qualitative and quantitative research methods to interrogate the geopolitics that play out in the reordering of material communication infrastructures of China, Russia, and the European Union.
Transnational communication networks have existed since 1865, but at the beginning of inter-state conflicts submarine cables would be cut. Currently, internet cables circle the globe and China, Russia, and the European Union are interconnected through the internet. Neither the war in Ukraine nor tensions between the US and China have changed that. This research will examine how the EU, China, and Russia seek to inscribe their norms and values by shaping informational flows and controls in their respective communication networks while maintaining interconnectivity with other networks. The research analyses the target countries’ policy-industry-research-implementation pipeline, to understand how their information networks take shape.
The PhD researcher will engage in the qualitative and quantitative analysis of policy documents, technical documents, mailing lists, and network measurements and validate their findings through elite interviews.
Please find the full description of the vacancy here
We will accept applications until May 10th, 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
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.
call for papers Open Panel “Making 5G Matter: Transformations in Network Infrastructure and Research” at EASST-4S Conference, Amsterdam July 2024
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.
