critical infrastructure lab

Rethinking Cloud and AI Infrastructure — Environmental, Technical, and Governance Challenges

The 1st INFRASTRUCTURE Workshop brings together researchers from Computer Science, Science and Technology Studies (STS), and related fields to critically examine the material, environmental, and socio-technical foundations of today’s computing systems. It addresses:

• The growing environmental impact of datacenters and AI infrastructure,
• The illusion of infinite scalability and its socio-technical consequences, and
• The centralisation and governance of cloud infrastructure

The workshop emphasizes interactive discussion between communities, aiming to generate open questions and dialogue among participants.

Fieke Jansen will deliver the keynote address Governing infrastructures: keeping compute infrastructures within planetary boundaries

https://infrastructure.web.deuxfleurs.fr/2025/program/#keynotes-9301045-cet

A community evening about regenerative technologies, permacomputing and symbiotic energy systems.

An evening full of talks | Thursday, November 27 | 20:00–22:30 | Tolhuistuin

What if we could power computer systems in collaboration with living organisms? Are there ways to reimagine energy production, data storage and the re-use of waste streams through experimental regenerative art and design? 

If these questions spark your interest and longing for alternative digital futures, you are warmly invited to join the evening programme (De)Growing Infrastructures on Thursday November 27 at WarmingUp Festival. Presented by Amsterdam-based FIBER and Waag Futurelab, various makers and thinkers share their work and how they experiment, build and dream about new computational futures.

Computing infrastructures and their daily use have a damaging carbon and material footprint across the planet. Yes, this includes your daily ChatGTP searches. These systems are extractive by design; they depend on huge amounts of coal, water and land. The rapid expansion of digital ecosystems is only made possible by exploiting natural resources, pushing the planet further into uninhabitable states.

Linked to the WarmingUp festival theme The Art of Coexisting, we come together to learn and share how to imagine, prototype, build, store and grow together with others (human and non-human) on regenerative digital futures. Can we collectively grow a new vision on computation?

Speakers: Leo Scarin, Mark IJzerman, Ola Bonati, Sunjoo Lee, The Critical Climate Computing Group (Wesley Goatley & Mariana Marangoni), Fieke Jansen, Rein van der Woerd, Marina Otero Verzier. Moderated by: Abdo (Abdelrahman) Hassan

Why should I join?

Expect an evening with short talks by artists and a more in-depth panel conversation, where various artists and researchers will shine their light on regenerative modes of computation through the application of microbial metabolism, permacomputing, waste energy and digital composting. In other words: redesigning digital infrastructures to operate in a kinder, less destructive way. And while doing so, prepare ourselves for an adapted form of computation, separated from Technofeudalism, within the reality of a climate emergency. The programme is open for everyone: newcomers and experts, we’ll make sure you will be introduced and get a good understanding of who is doing what (and why?!).

In addition to the talks, a workshop on the theme of Permacomputing will take place on 24 November, organised by Waag. More information here 

FIBER is supported by the Amsterdam Fund of the Arts and the Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie. This programme is part of FIBER’s nomadic Reassemble Lab series

Background info

In late 2024, FIBER and the broader Permacomputing Community organized the first Dutch symposium on permacomputing and environmentally conscious media and networking technologies at the Tolhuistuin. Titled Practising Permacomputing, we explored how the theory of permacomputing can be put into practice by a wide variety of artists, designers and activists. Now, one year later, we return to Tolhuistuin with as many contributors as possible for one dynamic evening to pose the question: where is everyone at? What has happened in the meantime and which art and technology projects are currently underway?

Event Information

• Thursday November 27
• Tolhuistuin, Zonzij
• 20:00 – 22:30 (Drinks till 23:00) | Door 19:30

Tickets: https://shop.paylogic.com/d203f4cd12fe489db1f327cc65cc668f/

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.

https://spui25.nl/programma/we-can-change-the-defaults-building-networks-of-consent-and-spaces-of-joy-in-the-ruins-of-social-media

Longstanding concerns from hacker culture and activist communities are gaining renewed urgency. From governmental dependency on Microsoft systems and our university’s reliance on Google, to data breaches in medical information: there seems to be a breaking point in our concerns with the issues of data safety, privacy and trust.

Over the past two decades, decisions about our digital reality, such as the centralization of services, proprietary standards, and opaque data flows, have materialized ideological assumptions about efficiency, scale, and trust into the architecture of our digital infrastructures. Today, these assumptions are increasingly being questioned, as individuals, institutions, and even nation-states confront the consequences of outsourcing core functions to a handful of global tech providers.

Maxigas will discuss how issues like data sovereignty, surveillance, and digital dependency are not just technical challenges, but political and social ones. We’ll also ask: do we truly need ‘high tech’ to meet our everyday needs, or do we simply need  better, more accountable tech?

https://sggroningen.nl/evenement/alienation-design

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