@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

stefanlaser

@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de

Social scientist ✒ on 🚯🚆🐮💾. #sts #sociology #ecology #waste #energy

Navigating material politics: vital digital infrastructures, political experiments, and precarious social relations.

I use qualitative ethnographic methods but also turn to digital methods and coding to enrich the analysis. Currently following the value chain of data centres. Work in #Bochum, GER, living #Hanoi, #Vietnam, #SEA.

I'm also into sports, #running #cycling, #photography, and Vietnamese. #tfr

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stefanlaser, to streetphotography
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

“Exotic animal,” mobile application.

stefanlaser, to Sociology
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

Ever used Zoom? Googled? Discussed numbers and their implications?

We have a new article out and ask how online data is endowed with worth in virtual collaboration workshops.

https://valuationstudies.liu.se/article/view/3598

A RUSTlab and Uni Dresden collab. 🫶

stefanlaser, to random
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

in Arizona: a concrete monster hungry for water, in the middle of the desert, driving a culture shock. A debacle? That’s quite a story by Rest of the World.

I wonder how this will play out in Dresden, when the new chip facility comes.

https://restofworld.org/2024/tsmc-arizona-expansion/

inquiline, to random
@inquiline@union.place avatar

TFW you just can't stop censuring Jewish intellectuals for <checks notes> antisemitism

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/10/nancy-fraser-cologne-university-germany-job-offer-palestine

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@inquiline That case is quite a hot topic in Germany, rightly so. It may boil down, in this case at least, to awkward decisions at one particular institution though.

CatherineFlick, to random
@CatherineFlick@mastodon.me.uk avatar

I’m once again asking my 20 month old to go to sleep, it’s 4am and you’ve been awake for 90 min

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@CatherineFlick Feel you! Very much.

24 months

inquiline, to random
@inquiline@union.place avatar

“Is it cake” for the STS set: Is it infrastructure?

(had a slightly more academic convo about this w the grad class yesterday) (and i do mean slightly)

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@davidthewid @inquiline @richpuchalsky It's just a methodology, once a provocative one, so this has to be the case.

But then...is there a limit to what social scientists will call "just a lens"? 😄

stefanlaser, to books
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

"The Discarded interweaves stories about imaginary with reflections on libraries, both real and dreamt. In an age of decreasing literacy, disposable content, and banned books, what do we preserve and discard?"

https://www.unboundedition.com/product/the-discarded-colin-hamilton-short-fiction/

stefanlaser, to random
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

Open Access PDF: Unser Buch über artenübergreifende Fürsorge ist freigeschaltet. Es handelt von der Fleischindustrie und den Lehren anhand einer Analyse öffentlicher Medien.

https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-6341-9/artenuebergreifende-fuersorge/?number=978-3-8394-6341-3

stefanlaser, to sts
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

Against leakage, against repair—Nerea Calvillo challenges purity fantasies. What matters is stopping the pollution. Period. Containment as a problem.

It also challenges key popular terms of current critical scholarship.

@sts

rwg, to fediverse
@rwg@aoir.social avatar

Latest post: Researching the fediverse from the perspective of individual or instances. In which I draw on an article Christina Dunbar-Hester to talk about researchers' perspectives on the , including my own.

https://fossacademic.tech/2024/03/14/Instances-and-Individuals.html

[replies to this post will appear as comments on my blog, unless set to followers-only or more private. CWs will work]

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@rwg @inquiline @mel_hogan @luis_in_brief @ntnsndr @signalapp @rra @Aepasek Thanks for the call out!

I'm not sure if storage is the main trouble maker. (It could be.) We're currently arranging a data sprint event with data centre professionals where we want to push them, among other things, on the always-on nature of data centres. That's where the magic is. Like, shutting things down/slowing things down so that a network is good enough

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@rra @rwg @inquiline @mel_hogan @luis_in_brief @ntnsndr @Aepasek This is remarkable, thank you very much. Do you think switching to , , etc would change anything? Or turning off certain media? Sounds like you already do a lot.

stefanlaser, to random
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

Sharing special issue love: We invite contributions to discuss the mediation of knowledge practices and planetary matter through data infrastructures.

https://sciencetechnologystudies.journal.fi/announcement/view/689

#datastudies #mediastudies #sts

inquiline, (edited ) to mastodon
@inquiline@union.place avatar

Friends, strangers, haters: I have... made hay. Let no one say I haven't committed to the bit.

(Wrote a paper about Asstodon, everyone be kind)

https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/13367/11436

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@inquiline Many lessons to draw form this, thanks. I somehow missed the hot ass controversy (what a mess!), which sounds fairly fitting re:

> “Lossy distribution” aka ... the phenomenon of how posts get seeded in a manner that suggests they are viewable to a wide, undifferentiated audience; but in practice results in, well, loss. And not only loss, but unknowable, invisible loss.

It might be true for all things social web. Yet more so for the Fediverse?

stefanlaser, to Germany
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

Liberals from block groundbreaking law. The adoption of the CSDD was just a formality. And it’s time to recognise basic human rights. So this came as a surprise. And not at all? Yet this lobbying has no clear force since many companies called for this change too. It sounds like a strange bid to gain non-existing voters.

Listen to the recent episode of :
https://wohlstandfueralle.podigee.io/236-lieferkettengesetz

stefanlaser, to Malaysia
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

vibe.

Lunar new year down south. Probing a (physical) filter at noon w/ harsh light conditions.

A place that smells like sambal and dhal, and where the SkyTrain cuts the horizon in half. Sure,

Just an apartment complex with some nice texture
New year decoration balloons zig-zagging left and right between two large residential houses, and yet another one behind. Lovely brick walls to the right
Close up of street food on KL's food street. Many aluminium baskets filled up, some eggplant in the front, a woman in the middle doing some cooking. Good job

stefanlaser, to tech
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

A linkdump that explores the lovely new web, the Vietnamese chip news cycle, and ambivalent ecological developments: https://stefanlaser.net/2024/01/30/a-linkdump-that.html

stefanlaser, to tech
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

“The making of critical data center studies,” Dustin Edwards, Zane Griffin Talley Cooper and Mél Hogan have finally published their piece in Convergence. Countering Truth made by Big Tech.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548565231224157

@sts

stefanlaser, to Energy
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

I’m a satisfied reader of Dominic Boyer’s new book “No More Fossils.” What a splendid excercise in energy thinking. Today, Dominic and Cymene published an episode of my favourite academic podcast discussing this very book w/ Cara Daggett. Cultures of Energy ftw.

The book is open access.

https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/no-more-fossils

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5saWJzeW4uY29tLzc1NjY2L3Jzcw

@ecologies

stefanlaser, to streetphotography
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

On the fence.

An animal and its past, or yet another future?

stefanlaser, to random
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

Caring for European Science & Technology Studies: EASST review 42(2) is out! reports, postdoc life, decolonisation, extractivism, pollution, and a tribute to Evelyn Fox Keller.

From now on I am part of the editorial board.😊

https://easst.net/easst-review/easst-review-volume-422-december-2023/

inquiline, (edited ) to random
@inquiline@union.place avatar

Can anyone recommend a good, accessible (to students) reading on tech hype cycles? Not, ideally, a specific case, but a more general treatment of the phenomenon

@sts

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@inquiline Good question, listening for other records.

Just because it's a timely fit: yesterday, @pluralistic put up a blog post about the AI hype and relates it to other recent hypes.

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/111608023778554856

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/19/bubblenomics/

estrid, to random German

Steven Jackson, @stefan_laser_, @sister0 and I invite abstracts to the panel "Planetary Data Infrastructures" at the @stseasst and @4Sweb 2024 .

The panel explores expanded engagements with networked infrastructures, both concrete and speculative, that help foster more response-able, aesthetic, cooperative, and sustainable planetary relations.

Note! We invite conventional but also experimental formats: audiovisual performances, poetry - don't hold back!
https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easst-4s2024/panel/14242

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@estrid @stefan_laser_ @sister0 Yes, join our panel P193 in Amsterdam:

> With the concept “planetary data infrastructures”, the panel explores expanded engagements with networked infrastructures, both concrete and speculative, that help foster more response-able, aesthetic, cooperative, and sustainable planetary relations. We invite conventional and experimental formats.

@sts @ecologies

stefanlaser, to mastodon
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

Comparing Fediverse software for hosting: Ease of use, efficiency, waste: https://stefanlaser.net/2023/12/18/comparing-fediverse-software.html

@sts

dawnnafus, to random
@dawnnafus@mastodon.social avatar

Just got wind of this new horror of "biodiversity trading markets" -- where companies can buy biodiversity credits every time they destroy land somewhere.

We've got to raise more of a stink about this. Utterly horrifying that people are trying to legitimize destroying one species in one place and support another somewhere else.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg6823

stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@dawnnafus So they're really going for the plot of the Venomous Lumpsucker, great.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/709614/venomous-lumpsucker-by-ned-beauman/

Private
stefanlaser,
@stefanlaser@social.tchncs.de avatar

@i_ngli @stsing @sts How about Pollution is Colonialism by Max Liboiron?, to question the questions and "drawing on" we like to do, eg with "kin" that can be "hella creepy" as Max writes. And it helps address the "Land" matter (Blut und Boden) afresh, although it calls for some new reflections

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