open reading group infrastructure reading group
bi- weekly tuesday session 16:00 – 17:00 cest/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
and a calendar event
March 18th – European Objects and Lifelines of our Society – Chapter 1
April 1st – European Objects and Lifelines of our Society – Chapter 2
April 15th – European Objects and Lifelines of our Society – Chapter 3
April 29th – European Objects and Lifelines of our Society – Chapter 4
May 13th – European Objects and Lifelines of our Society – Chapter 5
May 27th – European Objects and Lifelines of our Society – Chapter 6
June 10th – European Objects and Lifelines of our Society – Chapter 7
June 24th – European Objects and Lifelines of our Society – Chapter 8 and conclusion
July 8th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 1
July 22nd – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 2
August 5th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 3
August 19th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 4
September 2nd – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 5
September 16th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 6
September 30th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 7
October 14th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 8
October 28th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 9
November 11th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 10
November 25th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 11
December 9th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Chapter 12
December 23rd – The Invisible Weapon – Chapters 13, 14, 15
books we still hope to read (someday):
- Dalrymple, William – The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company.
- Deudney, Daniel – Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity.
- Diogo, Maria Paula, and Dirk van Laak – Europeans Globalizing: Mapping, Exploiting, Exchanging.
- Knox, Hannah, and Penny Harvey – Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise.
- Long, Pamela O. – Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late Sixteenth-Century Rome.
- Swenson, Edward – Infrastructures of Religion and Power: Archaeologies of Landscape, Ritual, and Semiotics.
- Fickers, Andreas, and Pascal Griset – Communicating Europe: Technologies, Information, Events.
- Högselius, Per, and Erik van der Vleuten – Europe’s Infrastructure Transition: Economy, War, Nature.
- Kaiser, Wolfram, and J. W. Schot – Writing the Rules for Europe: Experts, Cartels, and International Organizations.
- Trischler, Helmuth, and Martin Kohlrausch – Building Europe on Expertise: Innovators, Organizers, Networkers.
previous books read in this reading group:
- The Apple II Age – Laine Nooney
- Telegraphic Imperialism – Deep Kanta Lahiri Choudhury
- The Smartness Mandate – Orit Halpern
- Technology of Empire – Daqing Yang
- News from Germany – Heidi J.S. Tworek
- 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
/* We use CEST between the last Sunday of March until the last Sunday of October, then we switch back to CET
open reading group environment reading group
bi- weekly wednesday 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 | sign up for the mailinglist here and add you reading suggestions here.
Upcoming readings:
– February 26: There are two readings. The draft position paper of the Waag on regenerative infrastructures (see attached) and ‘The compost engineers and sus saberes lentos: a manifest for regenerative technologies‘ by Joana Varon and Lucía Egana
– March 12: Michelle Murphy ‘Afterlife and decolonial relations‘ and ‘Chemical Regimes of Living‘
– March 26: Elemental infrastructures for atmospheric media: On stratospheric variations, value and the commons by D. McCormack and The Elements of Media Studies by N. Starosielski
– April 9: Anne Tsing ‘On Nonscalability: The Living World Is Not Amenable to Precision-Nested Scales‘
– April 23: Towards Planet-Proof Computing: Ten Key Elements EU Data Centre Sustainability Policy Should Take Onboard by Jessica Commins and Kristina Irion. They also wrote a blog post about it.
– May 7: Max Liboiron, Manuel Tironi, and Nerea Calvillo ‘Toxic politics: Acting in a permanently polluted world‘
– May 21: [place holder for writing from the group]
previous books and articles read in this reading group:
– 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
– discard studies: wasting, systems, and power by Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky
– An alternative planetary future? Digital sovereignty frameworks and the decolonial option by Sebastián Lehuedé
– ‘Socialism is not just Built for a Hundred Years’: Renewable Energy and Planetary Thought in the Early Soviet Union (1917–1945) by Daniela Russ
– Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador by Thea Riofrancos
– The Security–Sustainability Nexus: Lithium Onshoring in the Global North by Thea Riofrancos
– The Internet Shutdown and Revolutionary Politics: Defining the Infrastructural Power of the Internet by Michael Truscello
– The world wide web of carbon: Toward a relational footprinting of information and communications technology’s climate impacts by Anne Pasek, Hunter Vaughan, and Nicole Starosielski.
– Shifting from ‘sustainability’ to regeneration by Bill Reed
– A Digital Tech Deal: Digital Socialism, Decolonization, and Reparations for a Sustainable Global Economy by Michael Kwet
– We Need To Rewild The Internet by Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon
– Beyond Wiindigo Infrastructure by Winona LaDuke and Deborah Cowen
– How ‘Green’ Computing is Opening Up a New Frontier in Arctic Norway by Janna Frenzel
– A resourcification manifesto: Understanding the social process of resources becoming resources
– What might degrowth computing look like? + Strategies for Degrowth Computing
Water justice and technology. The Covid-19 crisis, computational resource control, and water relief policy
– Draft paper on IETF; framing environmental concerns and sustainability solutions by Fieke Jansen + Solar Protocol: Exploring Energy-Centered Design
– Draft dissertation chapter about the ITU and IETF work on environment-related standards by Kimberly Anastacio
talk - presentation - panel Brown Bag Session on Environment and Tech April 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:
AI Action Summit and Joint Statement
April 7 April, 3 – 4 PM CET
On Zoom – Register now
We are kicking off the monthly Brown Bag sessions on environment and tech with Michelle Thorne (Green Web Foundation) and Claire Fernandez (EDRi) on the AI Action Summit and the Joint Statement Within Bounds: Limiting AI’s Environmental Impact.
About the speakers
Michelle Thorne (@thornet) is working towards a fossil-free internet as the Director of Strategy at the Green Web Foundation. She’s a co-initiator of the Green Screen Coalition for digital rights and climate justice and a visiting professor at Northumbria University. Michelle publishes Branch, an online magazine written by and for people who dream about a sustainable internet, which received the Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanities in 2021.
She served 12 years at the Mozilla Foundation, where she was Mozilla’s first Sustainable Internet Lead and earlier the director the Mozilla Festival and co-lead of the Marie Skłodowska-Curiea Doctoral Network on Open Design of Trust Things (OpenDoTT). Prior to Mozilla, Michelle managed the Creative Commons international affiliate network from 2007 – 2010.
Other projects include: co-organizer of Open Climate, Mozilla’s Open Internet of Things Studio, Ding magazine, a web literacy program called Maker Party, council member of the Billion Seconds Institute, member of ClimateAction.Tech, and co-founder a sustainable fashion label, Zephyr Berlin.
Claire Fernandez is the Executive Director of EDRi, European Digital Rights, the largest European network of civil society organisations working to defend and advance digital rights in Europe and beyond. At EDri, Claire is in charge of leadership, mission and strategy, financial sustainability and oversight, and the daily management of the operations. Over the last three years, Claire has co-led strategic efforts for digital rights organisations to build their capacity to work at the intersection of environment and climate justice and technology. Before joining EDRi, she worked as the Deputy Director of the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), and prior to that as an independent human rights consultant, and as an adviser to the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, and represented the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Bosnia and Kosovo. She holds a Master degree in Human Rights from the Robert Schuman University in Strasbourg, France.
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.
talk - presentation - panel The Digital and Analog Ramifications of AI at the Milton Wolf Seminar on Media & Diplomacy April 2025
Much attention has been given to the ways that AI threatens to supersede human intellectual processes and functions. AI, however, is driven by large language models and very real material resources. Almost every resource on the planet is fueling the AI juggernaut, with consequences for the power grid, nuclear energy, political structures, the production, trade, and trash of physical devices, human labor, and financial systems. The fast pace of AI’s technological advancement appears not so much to be leaving the materially tied world behind but feasting upon it. Panelists in this session will discuss such questions as: What is the reality behind the rhetoric of AI? What are the current and potential political and economic solutions to ameliorating AI’s role in the global system? What is the role of the media, diplomats, corporations, and activists in these decisions?
- Fieke Jansen, Head of the Critical Infrastructures Lab, University of Amsterdam
- Sandra Makumbirofa, Senior Researcher, Research ICT Africa
- Viola Schiaffonati, Professor, Politecnico di Milano
- Thomas Schneider, Director of International Affairs, Swiss Federal Office of Communications
Moderator: Kevin Blasiak, Postdoctoral Researcher, Vienna University of Technology
More here.
workshop Data Walk Workshop May 2025
May 12-13, 2025 at Utrecht
The purpose of the two day workshop is to bring together scholars and artists who have each engaged in developing data walks or similar projects, in order for them to reflect on the phenomena of data walks as a methodological approach to data power and critical infrastructure studies. The two day workshop will have space and time to explore the city of Utrecht, engage with like minded participants, and conduct a collective experiment in data walking resulting in a report/fanzine. The first day is dedicated to getting to know each other and exchanging perspectives in “show and tell” style presentations of prior work and the state of the art. The second day is for devising and conducting a collective experiment in data walk as a method. After the walk we discuss the experiment and document it in the form of a report/fanzine, with the help of facilitators in spontaneous experimental publishing.
The workshop is organised by the critical infrastructure lab, Institutions for Open Societies’ Open Cities research platform and the Data School, with [urban interfaces] at Utrecht University.
