"Pedestrian assemblages: Blind people’s walks as techno-sensory practices", together with Marcos Cereceda por the Iberoamerican Anthropology Journal (AIBR)
(rather: much belated translation of a previously published Spanish version in 2021, I guess it's never too late)
On 12 September, a fire in a #Hanoi house killed 50 residents. A tragedy that gained more local interest than the Biden visit.
Suddenly, new fire extinguishers pop up everywhere. And there is a national fear of e-scooters. There was a rumour that the fire was started by one. Turns out it was a normal scooter and a gas pipeline. But the myth is here. Like, an entire uni campus banned charging e-scooters. It's the usual anti-e.
"“There is no magic lens that will enable us to look at, to see nature unclouded … uncolored by any values, hopes, fears, anxieties, desires, goals that we bring to it,” Keller told journalist Bill Moyers in 1990 for his “World of Ideas” show on PBS."
I've know about this for a few days, but here is the official news release. #evelynfoxkeller #STS#FeministScientist https://news.mit.edu/2023/professor-emerita-evelyn-fox-keller-dies-0925
A new article examining COVID-19 testing situations - moments in which it is no longer possible to go on in the usual way - on Twitter published in Social Media + Society, co-authored by @NoortjeMarres@gabrielecolombo@lbngr@jwyg Carolin Gerlitz & James Tripp.
"anarchist print culture thrived through a dynamic combination of media technology, epistolary relations, and radical scholarship”
"Letterpress Revolution is a contribution to the history of anarchism, but perhaps.. even more productively read as an intervention in current discussions around political movements and the politics of technology"
✨ New paper in Information, Communication & Society: Multi-site domestication: taming technologies across multiple institutional settings ✨
The article proposes the concept of multi-site domestication to capture how technologies can require different "taming" processes when used across institutional settings with different and at times opposing norms, rules, values, and logics.
"Rather than try to fit robots into the existing categories (...,) Gunkel argues for a revolutionary reformulation of the entire system, developing a new moral and legal ontology for the twenty-first century and beyond."
I need to seriously reduce my time looking at screens, my eyes are virtually hurting.
What are your favourite podcasts? A bit nerdy, informative, deep dives, tech, ecology, queerfeminist discussions, Asia-Pacific.
I'm thinking in the lines of Cultures of Energy, @mel_hogan Data Fix, @parismarx Tech won't Safe Us, @emergencemagazine, Wohlstand für Alle, You're Wrong About, ... but also some format I do not have on my radar. @sts@academicchatter
Mah juxtaposes the petrochemical industry’s destructive corporate worldviews with environmental justice struggles in the US, China, and Europe: multiscalar activism—a form of collective resistance that spans local, regional, national, and planetary sites and scales and addresses the interconnected issues of #EnvironmentalJustice, #climate, #pollution, health, extraction, land rights, workers’ rights, systemic #racism, and toxic #colonialism
If anyone for some reason is looking for a review essay assignment on #petroleum, #shipping, #capitalism, Mah's Petrochemical Planet would go well with Oil Beach and Negative Ecologies by David Bond.
#AI#STS#CriticalAI#Algorithms#Automation#Capitalism#Marxism: "Matteo Pasquinelli’s The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence offers a compelling new perspective on the nature of artificial intelligence (AI). The author situates the recent development of AI in a longer history of attempts to automate work activities already in the Industrial Age, noting that current AI systems have an old pedigree prior to modern computers. This history, the author claims, extends into the distant past where algorithms were already embodied in ancient rituals to transmit knowledge and skills. By situating AI in a historical perspective, Pasquinelli urges a substantive rethinking of the nature of artificial intelligence and calls for a fresh approach to meeting the challenges and recognizing the opportunities posed by this technology.
Pasquinelli’s central thesis is that AI does not emerge by replicating human intelligence, but from encoding human activities into repeatable procedures – algorithms. In other words, the true basis of AI appears not as an attempt to create a thinking machine, but as the latest iteration of the algorithmic modeling of social practices. Pasquinelli asks, “What is AI? A dominant view describes it as the quest ‘to solve intelligence’ – a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind or in the deep physiology of the brain, such as in its complex neural networks. In this book I argue, to the contrary, that the inner code of AI is constituted not by the imitation of biological intelligence but by the intelligence of labour and social relations” (p. 2). He reframes our understanding of AI primarily as a technological entity to its reflection of human practices and social forces." https://mediatheoryjournal.org/review-matteo-pasquinellis-the-eye-of-the-master-reviewed-by-alex-levant/
CBI Image of the Day: A West Germany radio telescope at Effelsberg, measuring at 300 ft across, was built in the 1970s to monitor telemetry from Germany’s first deep space probe satellite, Helios. Data collected was decoded by a dual-processor minicomputer system from Interdata.
i was researching how breadfruit trees were moved around the world by colonials and came across this quote on the wikipedia entry for william bligh: "In order to win a premium offered by the Royal Society, he first sailed to Tahiti to obtain breadfruit trees"
it's not the first time i've seen references to royal society competitions/prizes/quests and i'd like to learn more about this subject.
but the histories of the royal society that i've come across so far have been in that sort of "heroic colonial"/"great man" mode.
i'm looking for something that's more along the lines of "what role did the royal society have to play in the movement of plants and other organisms?" it seems like they were putting out these "challenges" for "explorers", but that's where my knowledge ends.
i'd also be happy to read a book that's about the role of the royal society in empire-building & colonialism in general.
I'm putting together a reading list for a course on (un)sustainable AI. The goal is to keep it varied and not too theoretical. What are your suggestions? #sustainability#ai#aiethics#academia#sts
Sure, let's make more announcements at 8:30pm on a Tuesday night, why not.
Hey, people! I'm on the editorial board of #Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, and we are seeking submissions. Please think about putting something in if you are an academic, artist, or ghastly hybrid working on #sound#SoundStudies#SoundArt
With the danger that "AI could choke on its own exhaust as it fills the web" (per an article someone just shared), it feels like we are back to Adrian Johns' argument that, no, it wasn't the printing press (i.e. technology/distribution infra) that allowed knowledge to flourish but rather an elaborate sociotechnical system of trust and authority...
I've created a new key memo in our Obsidian vault. It synthesises many existing notes and describes how our studied data centre site in Germany is related to production networks in Asia-Pacific. In fact, the network view helped me explore and theorise relations.
But it's a real danger that such a view indicates finished research or fixed notions. It's worth reflecting on the performativity of such a tool. Reminds me of Gephi issues. @sociology@sts
Asking #DigitalHumanities scholars or social scientists working w/ the internet...
I've been a #solarpunk for a while now, but how would I do research on the community itself? I want a "vibe check" on what people are talking about, the sorts of arguments we tend to have, what texts/theories/people we canonize. I follow a lot of folks, but that's a mix of my interests+auto recommendations. Any way to get a view driven by my research questions, not The Algorithm?
Yes, you're right, #STS#ScienceAndTechnologyStudies is a great field to ask too. Especially because in this case, I'm specifically looking for attitudes towards/discussions of technology.
Questions like: how do we (solarpunks) theorize the relationship between tech and society? What sorts of tech do we think count as "solarpunk" and why? What sort of responses do we have against those who say tech itself is the problem? What is redeemable & even radical about tech?