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
talk - presentation - panel Measuring the (un)sustainability of the AI industry October 2025
The enormous environmental impact of AI products and services has become a major concern. At the same time, researchers are still struggling to exactly measure this impact. Companies such as Microsoft and Google share numbers on their use of resources and energy but do so in strategic and sometimes confusing ways.
During this symposium, organized by the Special Interest Group Greening the Digital Society, we invite you to discuss these issues and hear from experts in the field. We will discuss the limitations of (current forms of) measuring and defining sustainability. We ask: how can we investigate the harms throughout the production line of the AI industry, as well as emerging forms of resistance? How do Big Tech companies who are part of this industry try to strategically shape debates? And how can institutions and regulatory bodies, such as the EU monitor, and address this impact?
Valentina Ochner will present her research on Big Tech, carbon emissions, and the Greenhouse Gas protocol: https://www.uu.nl/en/events/gds-symposium-measuring-the-unsustainability-of-the-ai-industry
talk - presentation - panel Social Media: We Can Change the Defaults November 2025
Christine Lemmer-Webber, best known as co-author of ActivityPub, the decentralized social networking protocol, will speak about the crisis technologists face. Why must we revise the default assumptions of the web 2.0 era? She will introduce the work the Spritely Institute is doing to make a positive future possible.
The most visible technologists tend to be those who shill for tech and who can be counted on to be into the latest hype. They are founders or CEOs of major tech companies or at least work in their employ. They are also the reason many people don’t have a lot of trust in technologists and their ability to think about the world in anything but the most narrowly technocratic—and ultimately self-serving—terms.
Other technologists, however, manage to stake out a position that takes a broader set of concerns into account. They are able to formulate a critique of the default modus operandi from within technical practice, writing code and building systems that call dominant norms and practices into question.
This event features one such technologist, Christine Lemmer-Webber. Best known as co-author of ActivityPub, the protocol underlying most federated social media, Christine will speak about the crisis moment technologists face and the work the Spritely Institute, which she co-founded, is doing to make a positive future possible. Getting to such a positive future involves a move away from the assumptions underlying the web 2.0 era, and it also challenges orthodoxies of the Free and Open Source Software movement and the wider hacker culture. This move is not just a matter of developing different technologies, but entails a joyful and collective learning process.
