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
July 8th – The Dawn of Everything and The Invisible Weapon – Introduction and 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):
- Becker, Adam – More everything forever
- Carp, Alexander C. – Technological Republic
- Carse, Ashley – Beyond the Big Ditch
- Chabra, Deb – How Infrastructure Works
- 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.
- Frieman, Catherine J – An archeology of innovation
- Graham, Stephen, and Marvin, Simon – Splintering Urbanism
- 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.
- Negri, Antonio – The End of Sovereignty
- Swenson, Edward – Infrastructures of Religion and Power: Archaeologies of Landscape, Ritual, and Semiotics.t
previous books read in this reading group:
- European Objects – Brice Laurent
- Lifelines of our Society – Dirk van Laak
- 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 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 | sign up for the mailinglist here and add you reading suggestions here.
Upcoming readings:
Book: AI Infrastructures and Sustainability: Expanding Perspectives on Automation, Communication and Media edited by Anne Mollen, Fieke Jansen, Sigrid Kannengießer, and Julia Velkova. Email fieke@criticalinfralab.net for a copy of the chapters
– Sept 9 – Introduction and ‘Follow the Thing AI’ by Anna Valdivia
– Sep 23 – ‘Amazonia’s Place in AI: Minerals and Mining as the Cradle of Infrastructuring‘ by Débora Leal, Max Krüger and Sigrid Kannengießer and ‘Growing the Cloud at the “Corner of the Atlantic”‘ by AIIago Bojczuk.
– Oct 7 – ‘Aligning Energy Grids, Clouds and Public Values in Sweden‘ by Julia Velkova and ‘Aquaculture, AI, and the Planetary Domestication‘ by Patrick Brodie
– Oct 21 – ‘The Cruel Optimism of the Sustainable Cloud‘ Hamsini Sridharan and ‘Narratives of indispensability and infrastructural solutionism of AI companies‘ Salla-Maaria Laaksonen and Meri Frig
– Nov 4 – ‘Alliance or Self-reliance in New Geopolitical Technosphere‘ Malgorzata Winiarska-Brodowska and ‘Discursive Infrastructuring of AI in Russia‘ Olga Dovbysh
– Nov 18 – ‘Entangled sustainabilities‘ Anne Mollen and ‘Not Seeing the Data for the Trees‘ by Gerwin van Schie and Inte Gloerich
– Dec 2 – ‘Responsiveness and AI in Environmental Governance‘ Jędrzej Niklas and ‘AI Infrastructures, Total Mobilisation and Decomputing‘ Dan McQuillan
– Dec 16 – ‘More compute for a burning planet?‘ by Fieke Jansen and Niels ten Oever and ‘The Good Infrastructure‘ by Johanna Sefyrin and Julia Velkova
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
– ‘The compost engineers and sus saberes lentos: a manifest for regenerative technologies‘ by Joana Varon and Lucía Egana
– Afterlife and decolonial relations’ and ‘Chemical Regimes of Living’ Michelle Murphy ‘
– Elemental infrastructures for atmospheric media: On stratospheric variations, value and the commons by D. McCormack and The Elements of Media Studies by N. Starosielski
– On Nonscalability: The Living World Is Not Amenable to Precision-Nested Scales by Anne Tsing
– Towards Planet-Proof Computing: Ten Key Elements EU Data Centre Sustainability Policy Should Take Onboard by Jessica Commins and Kristina Irion.
– Toxic politics: Acting in a permanently polluted world by Max Liboiron, Manuel Tironi, and Nerea Calvillo ‘
– Air as Medium by Eva Horn
– Elemental infrastructures for atmospheric media: On stratospheric variations, value and the commons by D. McCormack
– Saturation: An elemental politics’ (introduction) by Melody Jue and Rafico Ruiz
– Climatic media: Transpacific experiments in atmospheric control (introduction) by Yuriko Furuhata
event RUSSIAN INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY AND INFRASTRUCTURAL COERCION: THE CASE OF TSPU October 2025
Dmitry Kuznetsov will present this paper at the upcoming AOIR2025 conference in Brazil https://www.conftool.org/aoir2025/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=488#paperID379
This paper examines how the Russian state, following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, accelerated coercive controls over internet infrastructure through the rapid deployment of Technical Measures to Combat Threats (TSPU). Building on Maxigas and ten Oever’s (2023) framework of infrastructural ideologies, the study introduces infrastructural coercion as a crisis-driven strategy, contrasting it with hegemonic models reliant on tacit compliance. The research combines analysis of legislative texts with an examination of sessions from the Conference of Russian Telecom Operators (КРОС, 2018–2024). Findings reveal operators’ strategies to mitigate coercive measures: exploiting legal ambiguities (e.g., license reclassification), adopting phased DPI implementation, and leveraging sanctions-driven import substitution. KROS discourse shifted markedly—from openly mocking “unworkable” laws in 2018 to framing post-2022 challenges as “temporary difficulties” within an optimistic techno-nationalist trajectory.
The study challenges state-centric narratives of digital sovereignty by centering infrastructural actors’ agency. It demonstrates that tools like DPI are neither neutral nor inevitable: their adoption reflects ideological priorities, while material constraints expose fissures in state control. Russia’s case illustrates that “great firewalls” can emerge rapidly using existing technologies. By foregrounding implementers’ negotiations, this research advances scholarship on infrastructural governance and the political valence of technical systems.
event Platforms & Governments October 2025
Dmitry Kuznetsov is chairing a panel on Platforms & Governments at the AoIR2025.
https://www.conftool.org/aoir2025/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=301
event Infrastructural Ruptures: anxieties, borders, and clouds October 2025
Fieke Jansen, Andreas Baur, Corinne Cath, Niels ten Oever, and Nai Lee Kalema are organising a session at the AoIR2025.
The rapidly changing geopolitical landscape forces us to rethink the relation between infrastructure, politics, control, and power. This panel contributes to discussions on ruptures by exploring how digital infrastructures reconfigure the state, market, and citizen nexus and presenting research approaches that interrogate transnational networks by centring their materiality. Jointly, the papers showcase how infrastructures are used as a continuation of politics with material means.
The authors present five case studies from the global north and south, which foreground the delegation and transfer of power away from states and citizens and the anxiety resulting from this. The papers frame the leveraging of infrastructures in global power relations through the lenses of bordering, infrastructural anxiety, defamiliarization, financialization, and necropolitics. Together, the papers show how the transfer of power to third parties, with their particular agendas and interests, leads to a reconfiguration of control, bringing new challenges to states and citizens.
Jointly, the detailed case studies raise questions about initiatives surrounding digital sovereignty, digital public infrastructures, and global internet governance as means of citizen emancipation and their ability to serve the public interest. The panel invites engagement with the development of new infrastructural ideologies to underpin sustainable and equitable futures.
The panel is timely because it shows that countries have not (yet) developed an answer to the transition from privatization and globalization to predatory neorealism, which echoes 19th-century conceptions of power that assert that ‘might is right’.
Learn more: https://www.conftool.org/aoir2025/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=596&presentations=show
