critical infrastructure lab

The event will start with a presentation by the Author, followed by comments by Dr. Kristina Irion (Institute for Information Law, UvA) and Dr. Andrea Leiter (Amsterdam Center for International Law, UvA) and by a Q&A with the audience, moderated by Dr. Niels ten Oever (Department of European Studies and critical infrastructure lab, UvA).

The event is a joint initiative from the ARTES transversal clusters ‘Power and governance’ and ‘Digital networks, communications, and technologies’.

About the book:

This book explores the dynamic legal semantics of territory as applied to data. It offers a theoretical assessment of the legal challenges that data flows pose for the principle of territoriality and for state sovereignty more generally. The concept of sovereignty has traditionally developed in close connection with the exercise of powers over a territory, and ideas of jurisdiction have always been based on the principle of territoriality. Digitalization questions however the very idea of physical frontiers. Interconnected networks make data in effect borderless. Data can in fact be created, stored, processed, and accessed anytime and from anywhere.

The idea of the book is upbeat: the law can keep pace with the ability of data to fragment reality. The condition for this is that sovereignty disconnects from territory. Disconnection is not getting rid of the territory once and for all, it only means that for data alternatives to the territorial connection exist.

About the Author:

Mariavittoria Catanzariti is a Research Fellow at the Robert Shuman Centre and Assistant Professor of Legal Philosophy at University of Padua. She joined the European University Institute as Jean Monnet Fellow in 2017. Barrister in law since 2010, she obtained a PhD in Law with a special focus on Legal Philosophy and European Law from Roma Tre University in 2011 and the Italian Scientific Qualification as Associate Professor in Legal Sociology in 2018. Her main research interest revolves around the interaction of digital transformation and information society with the law. Her publications cover different legal areas such as privacy and data protection, law and technologies, human rights, and legal sociology.

Time and Date: 17:00-18:30, 18 December 2024

Location: Humanities Labs, Bushuis F0.01, Kloveniersburgwal 48 (main entrance), 1012 CX Amsterdam

The wars in Ukraine and Palestine raise new questions about digital self-determination, digital sovereignty, the use of digital tools in warfare, resistance, and democracies. On November 15, the Digital Networks, Communications, and Technologies Cluster of ARTES is organizing a research seminar to exchange ideas about the social, cultural, and political impacts of war. This research seminar brings together different perspectives to understand the role of technologies in military warfare, digital infrastructures under fire, the role of culture in times of occupation, and the everyday lives of people affected by war.

Please check the website of the event for more information.

Supply Chain Security in Software Infrastructures: Pagers exploded in Lebanon on September 2024, thrusting supply chain attacks into the spotlight of global media attention. As a breakdown of logistical media, this attack harks back to a longer history of engagement with supply chain security issues in the world of computing. I examine such background through dissecting empirical examples based on archival material pertaining to software infrastructures that developers rely on for ensuring the authenticity of their products. Ultimately, exploding pagers can serve as an edge case for the theoretical framework of infrastructural ideologies that is being developed under the aegis of the critical infrastructure lab.

Location: Belle van Zuylenzaal at the University Library, Singel 425.

Time: 09:00-12:00

Interested in joining the workshop – email fieke@criticalinfralab.net

Data centres are a visible and at times contested infrastructure in the Netherlands. Local protests, such as in Zeewolde, have spotlighted the tension between the growing demand for data centres, negative public sentiment, and the broader concern that society is running up against planetary boundaries. In the sustainable and just infrastructure research project we explored this tension by asking the data centre ecosystem to identify the environmental harms associated with this infrastructure, current sustainability efforts, and things that need to be included in a policy if we rethink data centre governance in the age of scarcity. 

In the workshop, we will bring together different experts to discuss, explore, hack, and deepen the ideas and solutions that emerged during our research. For example. prioritisation rather than facilitating the mushrooming of digital infrastructures. This raises questions about on ‘What grounds do we prioritise?’, ‘How much infrastructure do we need?’, ‘What are the consequences of prioritisation?’. Or demands for an industrial policy that invests in, supports, and promotes a just and sustainable future internet. This raises questions on ‘What is sustainable and just?’, ‘Who decides?’, ‘Do we continue to invest in traditional silicon computing or is it the role of the state to dream big and differently?’ and ‘What are the opportunities and consequences of dreaming big?’.

Interested in joining the workshop – email fieke@criticalinfralab.net

Date & time: November 14th, 2024, 13:00 -18:00

Location Bushuis/Oost-Indisch Huis

Open Cities research platform November Research-in-Progress Seminar:

Technological Sovereignty in Media Infrastructures: Indigenous 5G Networks in India

Technological sovereignty is increasingly sounded by policy makers world wide as the common objective of three megatrends: digitalisation, decarbonisation and deglobalisation. Within such a framework, Maxigas examines how “indigenous 5G networks” are articulated in India. The empirical material is drawn from recent infrastructural ethnography in Delhi and Bangalore, which focused on making new media in the context of the government’s “Make in India” campaign. The story takes place on contested territory defined by the geopolitical ambitions, telecommunications standards, and technology vendors of the USA, EU and China. The findings are made relevant to the burning questions of the day by contrasting them with current policy developments closer to home. In particular, the ongoing debate on industrial policy for the new European Council, the publication of the Draghi report, and the conference on European Digital Independence.

Prof. dr. Payal Arora will be the main discussant.

7 November 2024, 15:00-18:00 at the Grote Zaal, Muntstraat 2A in Utrecht and online through a videocall

Registration

More information

On November 5-7 we will host three conversations on Tech-poetics and the Cosmos of Resistance, Regenerative infrastructures, and Playing with Solarpunk Computing and Tiny Infrastructures. Speakers include Thiane Neves, Miguel de Barros, Madeline R. Young-Touré, Jen Liu, Joana Varon, Sunjoo Lee, Luã Cruz, Spencer 張正 Chan, and Esther Mwema. See more info on each panel below. 

To discuss the ecological burdens of computation, challenge the notion of scale, uplift communal and regenerative computing practices, and dream together about alternative socio-technical pathways that center people and planet over profit and capital.

Panel 1: Playing with Solarpunk Computing and Tiny Infrastructures
November 5, 12h-1.30pm (UT-3), 10am – 11.30am EST, and 4.00-5.30 PM (UTC +1)
Zoom Link to Register:
https://mozilla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMkfu6rrD4tG9TuQENae6V2NSbadwjc3Ckz

Panel 2: Tech-poetics and the Cosmos of Resistance
November 6, 12h-1.30pm (UT-3), 10am – 11.30am EST, and 4.00-5.30 PM (UTC +1)
Zoom Link to Register:
https://mozilla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMldeyhpzIqHNUbB-TRa-FufW8qMrkwbnJY

Panel 3: Regenerative infrastructures 
November 7, 12h-1.30pm (UT-3), 10am – 11.30am EST, and 4.00-5.30 PM (UTC +1)
Zoom Link to Register:
https://mozilla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0vcu2hrT4sGNX5CFg7ya2Sz4Qaq2XCM17V

The panels

Panel 1: Playing with Solarpunk Computing and Tiny Infrastructures
November 5, 12h-1.30pm (UT-3), 10am – 11.30am EST, and 4.00-5.30 PM (UTC +1)
Speakers: Luã Cruz, Spencer 張正 Chan, and Esther Mwema
Moderator: Michelle Thorne

We already know what Big Tech built for profit looks like. But what if we reimagine digital infrastructures with community service, joy, and just the right amount of technology to meet collective needs? This panel explores these possibilities through solarpunk computing, tiny infrastructures, and other alternative models that foster sustainable, justice-oriented digital futures. We’ll learn from communities managing their own internet connectivity, gaining insights into resilience and meeting local needs through grassroots efforts. We’ll also hear from community-led renewable energy projects and how they inform sustainable, rights-based governance of technology. The panel invites us to rethink digital infrastructures — envisioning ways to reduce resource use while designing technologies that truly support collective well-being.

Panel 2: Tech-poetics and the Cosmos of Resistance
November 6th, 12h-1.30pm (UT-3), 10am – 11.30am EST, and 4.00-5.30 PM (UTC +1)
Speakers: Thiane Neves, Miguel de Barros, and Madeline R. Young-Touré 
Moderator: Lori Regattieri

This panel explores the intersection of technology, infrastructure, and socio-environmental impacts within the framework of racial capitalism and colonial power structures. Inspired by the critical writings of Sylvia Wynter and Denise Ferreira da Silva, it challenges prevailing biocentric and anthropocentric ideologies to redefine what it means to be human in a world deeply shaped by industrial and digital technologies. Through a blend of research, art, film, and documentary, the panelists critique extractive practices and their devastating effects on both human and ecological systems. By engaging with themes of infrastructure, environmental degradation, and colonial legacies, this dialogue envisions a future where technology systems are designed with a deep recognition of all life forms, fostering resistance, solidarity, and policies that honor interconnectedness and belonging in a cosmos of shared existence.

Panel 3 Regenerative infrastructures 
November 7th, 12h-1.30pm (UT-3), 10am – 11.30am EST, and 4.00-5.30 PM (UTC +1
Speakers: Jen Liu, Joana Varon, Sunjoo Lee
Moderator: Fieke Jansen

Internet infrastructures are a central but often invisible part of our lives. Recent protest and resistance against data centers have made certain challenges surrounding our infrastructures visible but fails to address the underlying values of growth, extractive, and abundance. Local win end up displaying the challenges to other territories. To flip the script and move beyond what is to what could be this round table centers on the idea of regenerative infrastructures, a term we use to describe restorative ecological and social approaches to infrastructures. We asked our speakers to offer different perspectives on regenerative infrastructures, focussing on community, environment, self-reliance, and autonomy, and alternative ways of thinking about infrastructures, from exploring low-tech and post-silicon computing. For example, washed-away concrete bridges in the rainy season deposit solid waste in rivers and lands and require external expertise to rebuild, whereas bamboo bridges decompose and can be rebuilt by the community.  

This panel series is supported by the Mozilla Alumni Connection Grants

About the roundtable: it will focus on designs for an ecosocial transition, in three key areas. It will address the planned transformations of spatiality (urbanism and architecture), technologies, and our relations to animals required for desirable ecosocial transitions.

More information can be found here

Date and place:

24 October, 2024

About the panel:

Eco, green, or simply sustainable technologies have several implicit meanings: long life, affordable maintenance, skilled people, resource-friendly, economical to use, renewable, regenerative, etc. In this panel, thinkers, practitioners and promoters of different aspects of software sustainability will discuss if and how it is possible to achieve a development model for people and the planet. Is there a way out of the disaster versus greenwashing narratives?

Panelists: 
– Christoph Becker, Associate Professor at University of Toronto, author of “Insolvent: How to Reorient Computing for Just Sustainability”
– Shweata Hegde, Developer at semanticClimate 
– Fieke Jansen, Co-principal Investigator at Critical Infrastructure Lab 
– Paz Peña, Independent consultant and activist, author of “Technologies for a burning planet” 
– Maxwell Beganim, Co-lead of the Open Goes COP coalition, Director of Open Knowledge Ghana 

Moderator: Lucas Pretti, OKFN

More information can be found here

Please RSVP here

We would like to cordially invite you to our Global Digital Cultures Soirée, which will take place on Wednesday, 16 October, 2024, between 18:00 and 22:00, the Brakke Grond Cafe. 

The speakers this time are Fernanda R Rosa (Virginia Tech, USA) and Niels ten Oever (UvA) and Fieke Jansen (UvA) of the Critical Infrastructure Lab. Fernanda’s research, ‘Following code with code ethnography’, asks: is it possible to decolonize infrastructural interdependencies between the global North and the global South? Meanwhile, Niels and Fieke will present early findings from an experiment in co-developing alternative infrastructural futures that center people and planet over profit and capital.

After brief presentations from these scholars, the floor will be open for questions and comments from participants. 

As always, our soirées involve food and drinks; the evening will start with drinks, and dinner will be served around 20:00. Attendance is free of charge.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Date: 16 October, 18:00 – 22:00

Please RSVP here

Location: Brakke Grond Cafe

Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance recently conducted two surveys targeting both IT providers and IT purchasers to examine the current landscape and the role of sustainability and regionality in IT procurement decisions. The event aims to kick-start a broader conversation about the core values that should shape the IT cloud and infrastructure market towards greater sustainability. As global companies continue to dominate the market, it’s becoming increasingly difficult—yet more critical—to find ways to level the playing field. This event will focus on discussing the survey findings and exploring how we can shift the market towards enhanced sustainability and transparency.

Date: 15 October 17:00 – 20:00

Location: Humanities Lab, University of Amsterdam, Bushuis F0.01,

Corinne Cath en Fieke Jansen spreken in een breakout sessie bij Internet in Beeld: Verleden, Heden & Toekomst.

Op donderdag 10 oktober vindt het event ‘Internet in beeld: Verleden, Heden & Toekomst’ plaats bij Felix Meritis in Amsterdam. Internet Society Nederland (ISOC NL), het Platform Internetstandaarden (Internet.nl), het Nederlands Internet Governance Forum (NL IGF), het ministerie van Economische Zaken, SIDN en ECP I Platform voor de InformatieSamenleving nodigen u hiervoor van harte uit. Er is deze dag een inspirerend programma voor u samengesteld met aansluitend een bruisende borrel ‘Bits, Bites & Bubbels’ ter ere van het 25-jarige bestaan van ISOC NL en de uitreiking van de Lifetime Achievement Awards!

Meer informatie en aanmelden vind je hier.

Please join us at the Documentation in Times of Crisis: conversation between Hiba Omari (RIWAQ), UKRAiNATV, Fieke Jansen (critical infrastructure lab), Nermin Elsherif (Utrecht University) and Alexandra Barancova & Eric Kluitenberg on the 29 of September at Framer Framed, Amsterdam.

The conversation is part of the full-day symposium “Really? Art and Knowledge in Time of Crisis”.

Numerous commentators and critics have observed a profound crisis in what it means to know and not know – an epistemological crisis, a crisis of knowledge. While this issue is old, there has been an intense debate for over four decades about what constitutes ‘valid’ knowledge and what does not. However, this problem has been greatly exacerbated by the spread of massive misinformation tactics. These tactics, employed by a new breed of malign state and corporate actors, are designed to create strategic doubt using sophisticated internet-based media forms.

Date & time: September 29th, 14:30

Location: Framer Framed, Amsterdam

More info & sign up here

At the 10th European Communication Conference ECREA 2024, Communication & social (dis)order, Fieke Jansen will talk about imagining spaces of governing AI infrastructures.

About the panel:

The hype around generative AI, like ChatGPT, is gaining increasing attention in media and communication research with a focus on transformations in communication and human-machine-interaction. This panel reorients these discussions towards an interrogation of the infrastructures, practices, and more-than-human relations that sustain the operations of technologies that go under the label of “AI”.

Questions that regard the socio-ecological relations and their far reaching implications to justice, environments, and infrastructures that emerge from practices of use and development of “AI” remain insufficiently discussed in media and communication studies, despite landmark work in critical data studies and Machine Learning that reveals the exploitation of resources, nature and humans caused by the production, training, and maintenance of especially so-called large language models (LLMs) (Crawford 2021; Bender et al., 2021). This work makes imperative to bring the analysis of relations between AI infrastructures, questions of sustainability and emerging forms of disorder to the core of concerns for research of digital cultures and communication.

This panel discusses AI infrastructures in relation to questions of sustainability. It explores approaches, empiric objects and the multi-valent implications of AI developments in different contexts, contributing to research on infrastructures in media and communication studies and interdisciplinary research on the socio-ecological implications of AI technologies, aspects of sustainability and global injustices.

The individual papers propose approaches to deconstruct norms embedded within AI development and application with relevance for socio-ecological justice through the application of sociological practice theory (paper 1); to analyse emergent frictions and inequalities at the intersection between transforming digital and energy infrastructures (paper 2). They also critically assess the expanding terrains of “green extractivism” of the digital industries that claim to solve sustainability issues through the application of data-intensive technologies exemplified by the case of aquaculture (paper 3) and explore spaces of governance as imagined by civil society actors that counterpose narratives of AI and efficiency (paper 4). All panel contributions demonstrate how investigating the multiple human and more-than human materialities, infrastructures, and practices that sustain AI are productive for deconstructing narratives of AI technologies, especially in relation to matters of socio-ecological justice, while also addressing questions of power, agency, inequalities, and multiple forms of disorders. The panel equally addresses media and communication research’s responsibility to conduct transformative research on AI infrastructures (paper 5), when being confronted with the need for a great socio-ecological transformation.

Please take a look at the schedule here.

More information about the conference can be found on the ECREA 2024 website.

In 2023, six out of nine planetary boundaries have been breached. We are facing multiple ecological and environmental crises while we continuously ignore planetary boundaries. Digitalisation and the use of Information and  Communication Technologies (ICTs) are proposed as ways to face these crises. But is this techno-solutionism, i.e. the hope that more technology can solve the problems of earlier technology, not just an utopia? ICT can provide some benefits, such as reducing the need for travel or improving energy management. However, their ubiquitous deployment and use, and their constant renewal cause severe socio-environmental damage and fall short of equity throughout their life cycle. We question the relevance of continuously introducing new digital systems, and the relevance of propositions solely focused on improving efficiency without addressing the socio-environmental damage these systems cause. As is, these systems and their optimizations are “band-aid” solutions that fall short of developing broader perspectives and focusing on systemic change – revising our current models and considering alternative systems.

The aim of SICT 2024 is to provide participants with a comprehensive insight into the multifaceted landscape of socio-economic harms along the supply chain and life-cycle of products, as well as the efforts being made to promote sustainability issues, and to foster a systemic understanding of the collective action required to shape a more sustainable future in the ICT sector. Throughout the week, voices from academia, politics, artists, activists and organisations will come together to discuss and analyse the sustainability challenges facing the ICT sector. The summer school will aim to move away from neo-colonialist and extractivist debates on how much pollution is acceptable for progress, to an approach that is making room for the most impacted to be heard.

We invite people from diverse communities, academic fields, the industry and arts to come together for a five-day summer school in early September 2024, in Brussels, Belgium. The event will be held in English. Places are available to master/PhD students, researchers, senior academics and people working in the industry and arts. We may have a limited number of scholarships available, details on this will be announced in the coming months.

Dates: September 9-13 2024

If you’d like to register, please follow this link.

Talk in the panel BP3: Reimagining Data (in Bangalore location), Friday 09:00 CEST, 12:30 IST, room B-RM R305.

The proposed panel brings together scholars and artists for methodological reflections on data walk as an empirical method and social practice. Data walk as a method emerged recently as a creative method employed by academics and artists for a variety of purposes from public engagement and project-based education to artistic research, or as a means of data collection for straightforward empirical studies. Loitering in urban public spaces of data infrastructures as a way to check our assumptions about more abstract notions of data power is the sensitivity that may connect these approaches. Nonetheless, the sensitivities go back historically and philosophically to the works of Walter Benjamin on the flaneur, the Situationist International on psychogeography, and to hacker practices such as wardriving.

After the fervent period of experimentation that describes the last few years, does it make sense now to discuss classical methodological issues such as canonisation, normative criteria, or the affordances and limitations of the interpretative power of the data walk methodology? In other words, what is a programmatic data walk? What is a successfully performed data walk? What data walks are suitable to address what epistemological questions? Which uses are there for data walks in academic life and artistic research?

A symposium on the topic is to be held Sprint 2025 at the University of Utrecht, bringing the results of the discussion at the data power conference to dedicated practitioners.

More about the Data Power conference and the programme.

Propose contribution!

It is clear that 5G makes a difference, but for a variety of factors it is far from settled what difference that difference makes. This combined format open panel seeks to convene new conversations about the transformations accompanying 5G, both to the information environment and network topology.

At the intersection of geopolitical struggle between global superpowers, domestic panics about viral conspiracy theories, and rapidly changing network infrastructures, 5G technology has emerged as a unique object of concern and contestation. This combined format open panel invites participants to present new research and engage in roundtable discussion on the transformations affected by the rollout of 5G devices and telecommunication networks. Such changes are broadly distributed and uniquely suited to the modalities offered by STS. They encompass global trade tensions, novel design choices by standard setters, and sustainable development goals, as well as renewed campaigns to define the place of wireless technology in contemporary society. To adequately address these transformations and the challenges they bring with them, critical scholarship on 5G must navigate between the quicksand of conspiratorial disinformation and the mirage of heavily financialized technosolutionism. This panel seeks to gather together a variety of researchers working in diverse locales on different aspects of 5G, in order to identify common obstacles, share collective insights, and advance the vocabulary of critical 5G research. Of special concern are the material contexts in which 5G technologies are situated, the workings of power in telecommunication networks, and their potentials for democratic engagement. What can the socio-technical differences 5G makes tell us about moments of transition? With this panel, we hope to make 5G matter as more than a marketing fad or lurid conspiracy theory and transform the terrain of 5G research in STS and related fields. We welcome proposals for paper presentations, workshops, and dialogue sessions.

Panel on the conference website

Conference website

Propose contribution!

The world is burning, but in and from the ashes a new world will be built. A new world needs new ideologies to inform subjectivity, organization, and materiality. In this panel we will interrogate experimental approaches to infrastructural ideologies that center limits, redistribution, and reduction.

The climate crisis, planetary scarcity, human limitations, and (geo)political conflicts force us to rethink transnational communication infrastructures to overcome their extractive, colonial, and imperialist tendencies. As policymakers, researchers, citizens, artists, users, and industry, it becomes increasingly hard to know and act in and through increasingly complex, layered, and entangled networks. To ensure that new infrastructures serve the public interest and contribute to social, economic, and environmental stability, we see an urgent need to develop alternative propositions for sustainable and equitable internet and digital technologies. Specifically, in this combined open panel we are responding to the need to articulate new ideologies, set a positive agenda, to inform subjectivity, organization, and materiality. In this combined format open panel we will interrogate theoretical, empirical, and speculative approaches to infrastructural ideologies that center limits, redistribution, and reduction over extraction, profit, and capital.

Since the internet has become the scaffolding of everyday life, there is a clear need to think and build beyond the principles of openness, interconnections, and networks. Now is the time to develop and prototype narratives about internet infrastructures that center people and the planet over profit and capital. Because an ideology cannot consist of text alone, this combined open panel will combine academic presentations, with a workshop and an interactive immersive experience.

This panel builds on the open panel ‘Overcoming Sociotechnical Imaginaries: infrastructural ideologies and materialities?’ organized at 4S 2023 in Honolulu and is in conversation with a growing body of work across – but not limited to – STS, media studies, infrastructure studies, and critical internet studies.

We encourage a diversity of submissions to help think through the complexity of today and develop new ideologies. These submissions can include but are not limited to, academic papers, essays, speculative fiction, solar punk, technology, code, and artistic interventions and installations.

Panel on the conference website

Conference website

Clingendael en Internet Society nodigen je uit voor een online paneldiscussie op maandag 8 juli over huidige stand van zaken rond digitale soevereiniteit. Panelleden zullen met elkaar én met deelnemers in gesprek gaan over de vraag: “Digitale soevereiniteit: zin of onzin?” Ofwel: wat is het nut en de noodzaak van digitale soevereiniteit? Wat zijn de belangrijksteuitdagingen om het in de praktijk te brengen?

Programma

Het panel bestaat uit

• Bert Hubert, Onafhankelijk technologie-expert
• Corinne Cath, Technische Universiteit Delft
• Martijn Lucassen, Ministerie van Economische Zaken en Klimaat
• Paul Brand, Stratix
• Diana Krieger, Soverin (ntb)

De sessie wordt ingeleid door Ruben Brave (Internet Society, internetpionier) en gemodereerd door Maaike Okano-Heijmans (Senior Research Fellow Clingendael, programmaleider Geopolitics of Technology and Digitalisation)

Date: 08 July 2024 14:00 – 14:45

For more information about the event, please check Clingendael website.

You can sign up here (in Dutch)

On July 8, 2024, an important multistakeholder meeting took place at Huys Clingendael, organized by the Clingendael Institute in collaboration with Internet Society Netherlands (ISOC NL). During this event, titled “Digital Sovereignty: Sense or Nonsense?”, around 150 stakeholders and experts gathered to discuss the current state of digital sovereignty and to identify concrete steps to ensure digital autonomy. Ruben Brave, chairman of ISOC NL, opened the meeting with an inspiring speech, followed by Maaike Okano-Heijmans, Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Geopolitics of Technology and Digitization Program at the Clingendael Institute, who moderated the sessions.

Theme I – Data Sovereignty: What Do We Want to Protect?

• Availability and Access: The panelists emphasized the risk of losing access to essential data and the need to reduce dependence on non-European cloud providers.
• Protection of Information: There was a debate about which information should remain within Europe and be actively protected, especially in sectors like defense, public administration, energy, and healthcare.
• Solutions: A balanced approach combining both protection and efficient data processing was seen as necessary to ensure both security and innovation.

Theme II – European Beehive Cloud Megascaler

• Scope and Definition: Developing an all-in-one package with essential services such as S3 object storage, Kubernetes, and IAM, meeting the highest safety and interoperability standards.
• Role of the Government: The government was encouraged to act as both a customer and investor, and to stimulate prototyping and the creation of a Beehive Cloud Megascaler.

The critical infrastructure lab fellow, Corinne Cath, contributed to the gathering as a member of the expert panel, together with Diana Krieger, Bert Hubert, Martijn Lucassen and Paul Brand.

Please find more information, including key takeaways and a preview of an upcoming follow-up event in October 2024 (in Dutch) here.

The Digital Methods Initiative (DMI), Amsterdam, is holding its annual Summer School on ‘Visual methods: From platform aesthetics and data visualisation to AI hermeneutics’. The format is that of a (social media and web) data sprint, with tutorials as well as hands-on work for telling stories with data. There is also a programme of keynote speakers. It is intended for advanced Master’s students, PhD candidates and motivated scholars who would like to work on (and complete) a digital methods project in an intensive workshop setting. For a preview of what the event is like, you can view short video clips from previous editions of the School.

Dates: 1-12 July 2024

More information here:
https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/SummerSchool2024

https://summerschool.uva.nl/content/summer-courses/digital-methods-summer-school/digital-methods-summer-school.html

Fieke Jansen and Corinne Cath contributed to the production of the episode “Sustainable data”, which will be aired on Dutch television NPO2.

Time: 19 June 2024, 21:00

We stream, email, and chat away. One hour of video streaming is equivalent to a week’s use of a refrigerator in terms of energy consumption, yet our data usage seems to be a blind spot in discussions about sustainability. With the rise of AI, this is going to increase significantly. How can we reduce the footprint of our data usage?

You can watch back the programme here (in Dutch)

5G, de vijfde generatie draadloze technologie, staat aan de vooravond van een revolutionaire verschuiving in de manier waarop we communiceren, werken en leven. Deze geavanceerde technologie belooft niet alleen ultrasnelle mobiele connectiviteit, maar biedt ook een breed scala aan toepassingen die onze samenleving zullen transformeren. Maar is dit wel iets wat we moeten willen? En wat heeft 5G de consument te bieden?

Sprekers:

Aina Seerden

Imme Raurus

Niels ten Oever

Website

Tickets

Join us on Friday, June, 14th when Niels ten Oever will be speaking about his recent paper ‘Internet Sanctions on Russian Media: Actions and Effects‘ at Workshop session 3.

The 2024 Politicologenetmaal (or: Annual Political Science Workshops of the Low Countries) will be held in Maastricht, bringing together political scientists from over 40 universities for two days of inspiring workshops, thought-provoking discussions, and valuable networking opportunities.

Please check the event website for more information and the programme.

The GIG-ARTS (Global Internet Governance Actors, Regulations, Transactions and Strategies) conference is a European annual multidisciplinary academic venue to present and discuss developments in Global Internet Governance (GIG) and their implications in and beyond this field of research. It is one of the outcomes of the GIG-ARTS project.

Paper Panel Session 3: Multistakeholderism and Digital Sovereignty

Infrastructural Sanctions, the War in Ukraine, and EU Digital Sovereignty
Niels ten Oever, University of Amsterdam; Clément Perarnaud, Brussels School of Governance; John Kristoff, University of Illinois Chicago; Max Resing, University of Twente; Moritz Müller, University of Twente; Arturo Filastò, Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI); Cris Kanich, University of Illinois Chicago

Date: 3-4 June 2024

Please find more information and abstracts of presentations on the GIG-ARTS webiste

Description: 

The war in Ukraine is known to have informed and inspired the acceleration of EU legislations aimed at strengthening the EU’s capacity to protect its “cyberspace” against the spread of disinformation and foreign interference, which the European Commission now equates to “ European digital sovereignty”.

While many have claimed the predominant discursive nature of digital sovereignty policies in the EU, recent sanctions banning the online broadcasting of Russian media outlets on EU territory could be interpreted as one of the first techno-material digital sovereignty measures. In this seminar, Prof. Niels ten Oever will present his latest research on this topical issue by exploring the implications of these recent sanctions for the European approach to Internet infrastructures and digital sovereignty.

Speaker:

Prof. Niels ten Oever, University of Amsterdam

You can find out more about this online event here.

Are you looking for a challenging position in a dynamic setting? The Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational and European Studies (ARTES) currently has a vacant PhD position as part of the critical infrastructure lab, led by main researcher Niels ten Oever, PhD. ARTES is one of the five Research Schools within the Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research (AIHR).

What are you going to do?

You will write a PhD thesis under the supervision of Dr. Niels ten Oever. You will use advanced qualitative and quantitative research methods to interrogate the geopolitics that play out in the reordering of material communication infrastructures of China, Russia, and the European Union.

Transnational communication networks have existed since 1865, but at the beginning of inter-state conflicts submarine cables would be cut. Currently, internet cables circle the globe and China, Russia, and the European Union are interconnected through the internet. Neither the war in Ukraine nor tensions between the US and China have changed that. This research will examine how the EU, China, and Russia seek to inscribe their norms and values by shaping informational flows and controls in their respective communication networks while maintaining interconnectivity with other networks. The research analyses the target countries’ policy-industry-research-implementation pipeline, to understand how their information networks take shape.

The PhD researcher will engage in the qualitative and quantitative analysis of policy documents, technical documents, mailing lists, and network measurements and validate their findings through elite interviews.

Please find the full description of the vacancy here

We will accept applications until May 10th, 2024.

The Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational and European Studies (ARTES) currently has a vacant Postdoc researcher position as part of the critical infrastructure lab, led by main researcher Niels ten Oever, PhD. ARTES is one of the five Research Schools within the Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research (AIHR).

What are you going to do?

In this two-year full-time postdoc you will be analysing the structuration of internet infrastructure with a particular emphasis on the research-policy-implementation pipeline of information controls. You will be combining the analysis of policy documents, research papers, and technical implementation of information controls to differentiate infrastructural ideologies in the European Union, China, and Russia.

Please find the full description of the vacancy here

Deadline: 1 May 2024

Despite ever-increasing discourse about internet fragmentation and digital sovereignty, the world has never been more digitally connected. At the same time, information networks are continuously being reconfigured by states and corporations at different layers of the stack. Taking this into account, what methods and theoretical approaches can be levered to analyze power in communication networks today? In this talk we will analyze the implementation of EU sanctions against Russian media, and the development of 5G and internet standards to see how the developing framework of infrastructural ideologies can help us understand the shaping of global communication infrastructures while taking the political and the material into account.

Niels ten Oever – assistant professor at the European Studies department and co-principal investigator with the critical infrastructure lab at the University of Amsterdam

Valentin Goujon – Doctorant au médialab (Sciences Po)

Hugo Estecahandy – Doctorant chez Institut Français de Géopolitique

Date: Fri, Apr 26, 2024, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM

More info here

This workshop, organized by the project B02 „Control/Space“ at the Collaborative Research Center 1265 at TU Berlin, explores different spatial changes and dynamics of the Internet infrastructure using the notion of refiguration, which presents a concept of tensions between four key spatial figures and spatial logics: the place, the territory, the network, and the route. These tensions allow for the explanation of key conflicts in contemporary modernity. Conference book with full programme available.

Maxigas (critical infrastructure lab): Media ecologies, infrastructures and environments: Infrastructure walk as a methodological approach

Or, things we learned from infrastructure walks.

The critical infrastructure lab held a series of “infrastructure walks” in
Amsterdam and Berlin, exploring the visibility of digital infrastructures
deployed in public spaces. I situate the methodological approach in
relation to other practices addressing key conflicts in contemporary urban
life that immerse observers within the spatial figures and spatial logics
of urban radioscapes. Subsequently, I highlight the methodological
advantages of the infrastructural walk compared to similar approaches.
Then, I report on the empirical and theoretical results obtained from the
walks. In short, the infrastructure walk experience is a good basis for
rethinking the key concepts of media infrastructures, media environments
and media ecologies.

Industrial standards can be mobilised as an analytical grid to structure
the urban experience of radioscapes. The insights thus generated
correspond to counter-mapping the spatial control exercised over and
through the electromagnetic spectrum in urban spaces. Such work exposes
the reconfiguration of power relationships in the city through emerging
technologies and legacy protocols. Infrastructure walks address the
question of what media technologies may mean “after all”, that is in the
context of the life world, lived experiences and action possibilities of
end users as embodied citizens.

Slides download

Our internet-connected devices hold an unprecedented power to multiply us into a manifold of realities. The conventional way to conceptualize this is segregational – we “space-out” and we’re in cyberspace. However, as Heidegger noticed, one of the essential spatial practices of living beings is coming-into-nearness: “spacing-in”. Adding Lefebvre, the space that we space-out and space-in is a social product: not simply an element or sphere within which the social operates, but rather the expression of it. It’s a multitude of connections, flows of communication and capital, conditioned by politics and economic relationships, defined by class struggles, represented by those in power, and lived by those who are subject to that power. The complex composite of ontologies that are unified within the internet are territories where cables and devices are juxtaposed with class struggle, virtual internet protocols, geopolitics, and human cognition. The escapist “spacing-out” is only one part of the picture. Let’s space-in.

More info on OT301 website here

On Thursday, April 4th, ECP, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Dutch Internet Governance Forum (NL IGF), is organizing the ECP Special ‘Digital Human Rights’ at Bleyenberg in The Hague.

This meeting will highlight both the risks and opportunities of digitization for the safeguarding of human rights. Following an introduction by Human Rights Ambassador Wim Geerts, experts will discuss the importance of digital human rights across various layers: digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and digital platforms.

Marjolijn Bonthuis – Programmadirecteur Digitale Veiligheid & Vertrouwen – ECP

Wim Geerts – Ambassadeur Mensenrechten – Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken

Niels ten Oever – Infrastructuuronderzoeker & Universitair Docent – Universiteit van Amsterdam

Ajuna Soerjadi – Directeur – Expertisecentrum Data-Ethiek

Naomi Appelman – Promovendus – Instituut voor Informatierecht (IViR) Universiteit van Amsterdam

4 April 2024, 9:30 – 13:30

More info in Dutch here

Topics can include but are not limited to:

• Socio-technical historical accounts of the computer networks and infrastructures in the Soviet Union and Eastern and Central Europe
• Cybernetic histories and legacies (Soviet and beyond)
• The collapse of the Soviet Union and the privatization or non-privatization of Internet infrastructures
• Telecom and Internet infrastructures in ECE and its dis/entanglement with Soviet legacy
• War-driven technological changes of the Internet infrastructure
• Local histories and precise case studies of the ECE Internet
• Methodological approaches to study ECE Internet and telecom infrastructures

more information here

abstract deadline: 02.04.2024

manuscript deadline: 10.02.2025

editors: Taras Nazaruk, Miglė Bareikytė, Svitlana Matviyenko

In our rapidly digitizing world, the demand for data storage and processing has surged, leading to the proliferation of data centers and cloud computing infrastructure. However, this exponential growth comes with significant environmental costs, as data infrastructure consumes vast amounts of energy and contribute to carbon emissions. This roundtable addresses this pressing issue, delving into the critical intersection of technology and environmental sustainability from the civil society perspective.

About the speakers

Fieke Jansen is the co-founder of the Critical Infrastructure Lab and a post-doctoral Researcher at the University of Amsterdam. She also coordinates the Green Screen Climate Justice and Digital Rights Coalition.

Kristina Irion is Associate Professor at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam. 

Becky Kazansky is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Political Science department at the University of Amsterdam.

Stefania Milan is Professor of Critical Data Studies at the University of Amsterdam’s Department of Media Studies and a Research Associate with the Chair in AI & Democracy at the Florence School of Transnational Governance of the European University Institute.

Max Schulze is the Founder of the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (SDIA).

Pepijn de Reus is a master student Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the University of Amsterdam.

Date: 20 March 2024, 20:00
More info here

Investigate AI’s contradictory role within climate change.
This event is part of the Goldsmiths AI UK Fringe public discussion series: AI Consciousness, Creativity and the Climate Crisis in collaboration with the The Alan Turing Institute.

Dr Dan McQuillan | Goldsmiths, University of London will lead the discussion and is joined by:

Boxi Wu – Oxford Internet Institute / Google DeepMind

Fieke Jansen – Critical Infrastructure Lab

Sebastián Lehuedé – King’s College London

Patrick Brodie – University College Dublin

19 March 2024, 19:30 – 21:00 CET
Learn more and secure your ticket via this link

for an Open Access publication with Palgrave as part of the ECREA Open Access Book Series

Proposal for an edited book on

AI Infrastructures and Sustainability

Deadline: 29.02.2024
Editors: Anne Mollen, Sigrid Kannengießer, Fieke Jansen, Julia Velkova

This call for contributions follows an invitation by the ECREA Open Access Book Series Committee to develop a proposal for a volume on “AI Infrastructures and Sustainability”. The Committee has invited overall three publications to develop full proposals – one of which will be selected as Open Access publication with Palgrave as part of the ECREA book series.

The proposed volume assembles research in media and communications on AI infrastructures in relation to questions of sustainability. We invite critical theoretical, historical, methodological, and empirical reflections on the “sustainability” of technologies that go under the label of “AI”. Contributions could include analyses of how sustainability, infrastructures or other related notions can be conceptualized in relation to technologies of automation – to deconstruct how AI-related narratives, imaginaries, norms, practices etc. with their ensuing implications manifest in infrastructures of automated communication. We also welcome authors to introduce new concepts that contribute to create more affective, transformative, theoretically nuanced narratives and understandings of how to make liveable relations with AI. Considering the necessity for a great socio-ecological transformation, the proposed volume also encourages reflections on transformative perspectives in media and communication research, addressing media and communication’s role in the shaping and transforming of societies increasingly becoming reliant on technologies of automation.

Submission details and expected time frame for publication

We are seeking abstracts (250-300 words, excluding references) to be submitted until February, 29 2024 to anne.mollen@uni-muenster.de addressing – but not limited to – one or more of the following topics:

• Critical theoretical, conceptual, empirical, and methodological work on “AI”, infrastructures and sustainability in media and communication research
• Critical discussions of sustainability, sustainability narratives and normative frameworks in relation to AI infrastructures
• Imaginaries of sustainability and AI (their construction as well as resistance to it)
• Human rights and digital justice implications of AI
• Extractivism and AI (labour, data, resources etc.), including AI-related protest and movements
• Intersectional perspectives on AI and sustainability
• Resource consumption and environmental impacts of AI
• Intersections of AI with local and energy politics
• Market concentration, political economy, geopolitical perspectives and global distributional (in)justices in relation to AI infrastructures
• Bias and discrimination in AI infrastructures, representation, and AI
• Transformative and transdisciplinary perspectives on AI and sustainability

Media and communication research can contribute with nuanced, critical, and normative analyses on the socio-technical relations that make and sustain AI infrastructures. This perspective is direly needed in the discussion of AI and sustainability, which needs to be acknowledged as more than a technical concern to which technical solutions can be found. A comprehensive media and communication perspective can instead assess the manifestations, contestations, and historical continuities in the emergence of AI infrastructures while reflecting on matters of sustainability. With the proposed volume we are calling on scholars to orient discussions on automation as well as human-machine-interaction emerging in relation to media and communications towards an interrogation of the infrastructures, practices, and more-than-human relations that constitute the operations of technologies that go under the label of “AI” through the lens of sustainability.

More information here

SPACE4, in collaboration with Housmans Bookshop and the FUTURES Podcast, have the pleasure of hosting Corinne Cath and Fieke Jansen, who will delve into the politics of internet infrastructure, the central theme of their latest book, “Eaten by the Internet.”

29 Feb 2024
18:30 – 20:30h
SPACE4, Housmans Bookshop & the FUTURES Podcast
London

Eaten by the Internet makes internet infrastructure visible as a force of political power, transforming the social world from the bottom up. It is made up of fifteen chapters, contributed by a global set of researchers, activists, and techies.

Dr. Cath and Dr. Jansen will be in conversation with Luke Robert Mason who hosts the FUTURES Podcast – a show that explores the topics of artificial intelligence, human enhancement, space travel and virtual reality. Mason is a British-born futures theorist who is passionate about engaging the public with emerging scientific theories and technological developments.

The future of the tech industry is in infrastructure, not data. This means that those companies that control key infrastructure, like chips and cloud computing, hold sway. Companies like ASML, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services (AWS), rather than X or Meta, will become the most powerful players. Is it their choices that will influence what our collective futures look like? Do we need to adapt our understanding of power in the tech sector to this new reality?

23 Feb 2024, 17:00

Registration info on spui25 website

About the speakers

Michael Veale is an Associate Professor in digital rights and regulation at University College London’s Faculty of Laws. His research focuses on how to understand and address challenges of power and justice that digital technologies and their users create and exacerbate, in areas such as privacy-enhancing technologies and machine learning.

Corinne Cath is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Delft, where they study the political economy of cloud computing. Cath is also a fellow at the UVA’s critical infralab and a research associate at the Minderoo Centre at the University of Cambridge. As an anthropologist, their interest lies in how power moves through infrastructures (in particular cloud computing).

What do the Dutch value in digital technologies? This roundtable presents the results of the first survey to explore the relation between public values, human rights, and technology design. We find that most people take measures to protect their online privacy, but also that half of the population has never heard of technical standards.

Stefania Milan is Professor of Critical Data Studies at the University of Amsterdam’s Department of Media Studies, a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University and a Research Associate with the Chair in AI & Democracy at the Florence School of Transnational Governance of the European University Institute.

Niels ten Oever is Assistant Professor at the European Studies department and co-principal investigator with the critical infrastructure lab at the University of Amsterdam. Next to that, he is a visiting professor with the Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas.

Douwe Schmidt is the Project Manager of Public Tech at the Municipality of Amsterdam.

Marjolein Lanzing is Assistant Professor Philosophy of Technology at the University of Amsterdam.

Bart Karstens is senior researcher Digital Society at the Rathenau Institute in The Hague.

Catherine Garcia is Senior Advisor on Institutional Relations at Internet Society.

Date: 21 feb 2024 at 17:00

More info here

Who holds, controls, and creates power in contemporary societies? On the occasion of their new book, The New Knowledge: Information, Data and the Remaking of Global Power, Blayne Haggart and Natasha Tusikov will present their answer to this question. They will take us along from Google’s Internet-of-Things projects, new modes of property and knowing that arose during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the ideology through which power exercised.

08 Feb 2024, 20:00
Registration info on spui25 website

About the speakers

Blayne Haggart is an associate professor of political science at Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada. Dr. Haggart’s research focuses on the international political economy of knowledge, particularly intellectual property rights, data governance and internet governance.

Natasha Tusikov, assosciate professor at York University, researches at the intersection among law, crime, technology, and regulation. She is a senior fellow at the Balisillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada and a visiting fellow with the Justice and Technoscience Lab (JusTech Lab), School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) at the Australian National University.

Joris van Hoboken is a Professor of Law in the Brussels School of Governance’s LLM programme. He is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam. He is also affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Law Science Technology & Society (LSTS). Van Hoboken works on the intersection of fundamental rights protection (data privacy, freedom of expression, non-discrimination) and the governance of platforms and internet-based services.

Marta Morvillo is Assistant Professor in European Legal and Economic Governance at the Department of European Studies, University of Amsterdam. Her research lies at the interface of EU law, constitutional law, and expert governance. Before joining the UvA, she was Emile Noël fellow at the NYU Law School (2020-2021) and Adjunct professor in Constitutional adjudication at the University of Bologna (2021).

Niels ten Oever is Assistant Professor at the European Studies department and co-principal investigator with the critical infrastructure lab at the University of Amsterdam. Next to that, he is a visiting professor with the Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas. His research focuses on how norms, values, and ideologies get inscribed, resisted, and subverted in communication infrastructures through their transnational governance.

Fieke Jansen and Corinne Cath are organizing a panel with a focus on data centers at Privacy Camp 24 in Brussels on 24 Jan. Data centers – the large windowless buildings full of server racks providing the computational power of the digital society – are increasingly at the heart of political contention in Europe. The building of hyperscalers in the Netherlands, Ireland and Spain are aided by opaque governance processes and have met resistance from local communities. These examples are indicative of a larger trend. Across Europe, large Big Tech companies are buying up land, gobbling up natural resources like water, wind, and energy, to build large-scale data centers for selling privacy-invasive services and software. Where local protests against the impending arrival of hyperscalers have been successful they have displaced its construction to other, often more vulnerable territories.

To address concerns around the energy consumption of data centers the EU is developing some guidelines to limit the tech industries’ carbon footprint– i.e. in the energy directive–and some nation-states are considering data center policy. Yet, none of these state interventions addresses the premise of infinite growth and extraction for which these data centers are built. We believe that given the growth of these data centers, a critical intervention is needed now that sets the tone for EU-wide debates on the future of the computing industry, one that centers people and planet over profit and capital.

Moderator:

• Dr. Corinne Cath, postdoctoral researcher at the programmable infrastructures group (led by Dr. Seda Gürses) of the University of Delft

Speakers:

• Dr. Fieke Jansen, post-doctoral researcher and co-PI critical at the infrastructure lab, University of Amsterdam
• Claire Pershan, EU Advocacy Lead for the Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla
• Kim van Sparrentak, MEP GroenLinks Europa, The Greens/EFA
• Michelle Thorne, Director of Strategy and Partnerships at the Green Web Foundation and a co-initiator of the Green Screen Coalition

Opening telecommunications to critical insights and public engagement
Maxigas, Critical Infrastructure Lab, University of Amsterdam
Abstract of paper for the panel “The Politics of Open Infrastructures”

I focus on opening up programmable infrastructures to critical insights, transposing
digital methods from platforms to infrastructures, the case in point being the next gen-
eration 5G mobile phone networks. In comparison with the information infrastructures
of the Internet, telecommunications infrastructures are notoriously inaccessible. Internet
infrastructures benefit from open standards, elegant protocols, revolutionary imaginar-
ies, public debates and ample civil society engagement. In contrast, telecommunications
infrastructures are rendered inaccessible by standards processes conducted by industrial
consortia, over-engineered protocol stacks, bland visions, regulatory capture, and the
absence of digital rights activists. The convergence of Internet with telecommunica-
tions networks renders this situation increasingly problematic, because as computers
and networks merge in programmable infrastructures, the future of communication and
control will be determined by telecom companies without public debate or civil society
participation.
In order to address such a research problem and provide an adequate response to the his-
torical moment, I propose, promote and develop the “People’s 5G Laboratory”, a rebuilt
mobile phone network for parallel operation and public experiments. The purpose of
the research infrastructure is to open telecommunications to critical insights and public
engagement through the innovative methodology of “dissection”. Dissection refers to
an analytical but experimental approach to gaining a materialist understanding of the
medium in which cultures grow. While dissection has been practiced during the Dutch
Golden Age as a means to advance science, in particular anatomy, and thus medicine, it
has also been instrumental in transforming the societal norms and values, promoting en-
lightenment ideologies through public experiments and debatable spectacles. By taking
a similar approach to telecommunications standards, implementations and deployments,
the Critical Infrastructure Lab aims to inject a critique of cybernetics into contemporary
debates on emerging technologies of media and culture.

Conference Programme

Hands-on research day about smart cities with Maxigas from the critical infrastructure lab for qualitative and quantitative researchers. Featuring datasets on programmable infrastructures such as 5G and its implementation in the OpenRAN software/hardware project. Discuss and analyse how infrastructural ideologies materialise in code bases, critique and propose alternative infrastructural futures!

Feel free to drop by any time.

friday 24 november 2023, 12:00 – 16:00

deakin downtown, melbourne, australia

Register here

Join us on November 23rd for a conversation about the future of the Internet, what we get wrong about how it works today, and why the future of the tech industry is determined by computing infrastructure not data.

About the speakers

Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic and author of Uncanny Networks (2002), Dark Fiber (2002), My First Recession (2003), Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012), Social Media Abyss (2016) and Sad by Design (2019). In 2004 he founded the Institute of Network Cultures at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. His centre organizes conferences, publications and research networks such as Video Vortex (online video), Unlike Us (alternatives in social media), Critical Point of View (Wikipedia), Society of the Query (the culture of search), MoneyLab (internet-based revenue models in the arts). Recent projects deal with digital publishing and the future of art criticism. He also teaches at the European Graduate School (Saas-Fee/Malta) where he supervises PhD students.

Corinne Cath is a cultural anthropologist studying the politics of Internet governance, AI and cloud computing. She currently works as a postdoc at the University of Delft in The Netherlands with Dr. Seda Gürses and Dr. Prof. Linnet Taylor. She works on questions of computational infrastructure (cloud computing and mobile devices) in the context of the administration of justice. Her current research focuses on how cloud computing and AI are transforming society, the consequences of these transformations for public institutions—and the adequacy of existing technology policy efforts that touch on cloud computing. She is a research affiliate at Cambridge University’s Minderoo Centre and a fellow at the critical infrastructure lab at the University of Amsterdam. 

Keynote at symposium organised by Deakin University’s Critical Digital Infrastructures and Interfaces research group in Melbourne, Australia. Take a closer look at how our interactions with digital technologies are shaped by the common ‘sovereigns’ that construct the infrastructures of daily life!

“Featuring a keynote by Maxigas of the Critical Infrastructure Lab, and bringing together bright emerging voices researching the social and political implications of contemporary digital technologies, this symposium will examine what matters across diverse topics such as the platformisation of music culture, new ways of understanding digital territories, hearing technologies driving health and wellbeing economies, and the feminist technoscience of humanitarian labour.”

View the program

Wednesday 22 November 2023, 09:00 – 14:00

Deakin Downtown, Melbourne, Australia

Join Maxigas in discussing the role of academic labs in bringing about desired futures. The “science shop” movement pioneered in the Netherlands directly linked academic institutions with social movements to counterbalance techniques of management tied to capital. These moves have reverberated through the growth of ‘labs’ of science technology and society with normative goals. The Citizens Lab (U of T), Critical Infrastructures Lab, and in some ways ADM+S, reflect modes of thinking through ways to affect wider cultural, political, technological changes, with the limited capacities and budgets of public academic modes of engagement. We ask what do the examples of working in an academic setting with an institutionalised mandate for social change map to, feel like, and what can we learn from them? If you’d like join discussion and reflection on the continuing evolution of ‘labs’ please mail Luke.h@Deakin.edu.au .

Monday 20 November 2023, 12:00 – 13:30

Deakin Downtown, Melbourne, Australia

https://www.admscentre.org.au/event/do-labs-have-politics/

Open panel at the annual meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, the professional society of Science and Technology scholars.

The concept of sociotechnical imaginaries is very popular in STS research, yet we suggest that has reached the limits of its explanatory powers. Sociotechnical imaginaries insufficiently account for power imbalances in the design, standardisation, production, and maintenance of infrastructures and their governing institutions. To overcome this problem, we invite contributions that foreground power and technological materiality, and do not solely, or mainly, take identities, opinions, and visions as a starting point for arguments. Technological materialities are not merely a reflection of aligned interests, expertises, or identities. Material affordances of technology can subvert the influence of actors. Such a process is not necessarily intentional, but can emerge in the use and maintenance of a technology. The concept of ideology can explain who exerts power, how such power is exerted and subverted, and what is at stake in social conflicts around material configurations. We build on Althusser and Humphrey in saying that ideology is not simply a linguistic phenomenon; it also appears in material structures, discourses, institutions, and practices. We want to further explore what this notion can do to explain how social conflicts are articulated through struggles over shaping materiality, often under the guise of a (co-)production process. We call for contributions from researchers who are interested in exploring conceptual frameworks that can better account for the role of materiality and power in the social conflicts around technological innovation, standardisation, deployment, and maintenance, including but not limited to renewed interest in ideology as a conceptual framework.

Open panel at the annual meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, the professional society of Science and Technology Studies scholars.

Political and industrial narratives present technology as the solution to the multiple ecological crises society is confronted with, without engaging with the material consequences in terms of minerals, land, labour, and energy (Crawford, 2021; Cubitt, 2016; Hogan et al., 2022). As Dr. Max Liboiron traces out in ‘Pollution is Colonialism’ (2021), extraction and pollution are legitimated through threshold theories of harm, which set arbitrary limits on harmful practices and allow ‘acceptable’ amounts of pollution to continue. Liboiron demonstrates how this approach to managing harms obscures the institutions and actors that perpetrate violence in the first place, foreclosing possibilities to resist and transform power relations. With this open panel, we invite contributions that engage with Liboiron’s call to move from ‘a question of harm that asks ‘how much’ … to ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions about violence’ (Liboiron 2021). We bring this question to the context of digital technologies and their social and environmental implications, asking what such a switch of perspective might look like with regard to ‘Big Tech’ monopolies, the distributedness and scales of networked computing infrastructures, and their entanglements with extractive industries (c.f. Arboleda 2020). How can systemic violence and questions of accountability be addressed in this context? Contributions can range from papers unpacking how a narrow economic lens on climate change (‘green capitalism’) perpetuates violence; to explorations of research methodologies putting feminist, anticolonial, critical race, and solidarity epistemologies into practice; to projects that develop alternative sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim 2015) for the principles that organise internet infrastructures.

Open panel at the annual meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, the professional society of Science and Technology Studies scholars.

The Russian aggression against Ukraine and the violation of its people and territories have a long history. Situated between a number of colonial powers, Ukraine and its people were imaged and imagined as a component of material exchange, while the anti-imperial resistance is systematically ignored. In this panel, we question the material consequences of the war in Ukraine, the imperial forces at work, and the resistance against them. We want to explore different angles of the conflict through theoretical concepts and the analysis of the material conditions. For instance, the production of terror environments (Matviyenko), resourcification (Bazdyrieva, Richardson), erasure as a tool of imperialism (Tsymbalyuk), etc. We invite contributions that explore and expose the socio-material aspects of the war across topographies and topologies, such as sea (through gas pipelines, submarine cables, and bridges), sky (through satellites and drones), and land (electrical grids and trenches). The long-term slow and fast violence against the people and environment of Ukraine shapes an ecology that is not just endangering people or/and the ecology itself, but the ability to recognize subjectivity and agency at the “peripheries” of imperial powers. This panel aims to bring to the fore different kinds of spatial, environmental, and ideological reconfigurations that have led to the current moment. We aim to center Ukrainian scholars and their experiences, while also inviting other scholars to contribute.

Sign up here: https://spui25.nl/programma/eaten-by-the-internet

Our world is eaten by the Internet. This means that those who control the Internet control the bounds of public speech, economic production, social cohesion, and politics, making its infrastructure a core political terrain in the networked age. This evening we honor a new book about the power of Big Tech and the future of the digital society, Eaten by the Internet. The discussion with the book’s authors and editor will make Internet infrastructure visible as a key force of political power and urge us to ask how can we ensure the Internet will sustain us, rather than consume us?

To understand power in the contemporary Internet industry, we must look closely at its often invisible infrastructure. This is made of material components such as cell antennas, clouds, chips, data servers, and satellites, but also less tangible, equally crucial standards and software components, including the operating systems, browsers, and computing power that enables connectivity. All these components rarely attract our attention unless something breaks down. And even then, many Internet users won’t ask why.

Eaten by Internet makes Internet infrastructure visible as a force of political power, demonstrating how it is transforming the social world. Four of the original contributors of the book will be present to discuss their chapters, taking on thorny topics, such as power consolidation in the advertisement and cloud industry, online censorship in Asia, the role of Internet infrastructure in governmental and corporate surveillance in the city of Amsterdam, and tech’s environmental impact – amongst others. In doing so, this event will root contemporary technology debates in the politics of digital infrastructure and help us design an Internet that answers to public values.

About the speakers

Corinne Cath is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Delft funded by the Algosoc consortium, a fellow at the UvA’s critical infrastructure lab, and a research associate at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at Cambridge.

Gurshabad Grover is a technologist and legal researcher based in Delhi, India. Gurshabad’s research focuses on network security, censorship, and surveillance.

Fieke Jansen is the co-founder of the critical infrastructure lab and a post-doctoral Researcher at the University of Amsterdam. She also coordinates the Green Screen climate justice and digital rights coalition.

Michael Veale is an Associate Professor in digital rights and regulation at University College London’s Faculty of Laws. His research focuses on understanding and addressing challenges of power and justice that digital technologies and their users create and exacerbate, in areas such as privacy-enhancing technologies and machine learning.

Niels ten Oever is an Assistant Professor of AI and European Democracies at the European Studies Department and co-founder of the critical infrastructure lab at the University of Amsterdam.

The visual identity of the critical infrastructure lab is the result of a collective thought and creation process between the lab’s co-leads Fieke Janssen, maxigas, Niels ten Oever, and the communication designer Ulrike Uhlig.

For a week, Ulrike not only observed the work of the lab, she also conducted several workshops during which several questions and subjects were researched, the two most important ones:

• who are we?
• how do we want people to see/feel/understand the critical infrastructure lab?

the result of these workshops produced several phrases which served as visual clues for the design. “we are a transformative and decentering force” was our most important guiding principle.

we knew we wanted to use a font family which works in print and on screen and which came with an open license. Ulrike conducted tests with several candidates, before we collectively decided to go with the Source font family (Sans, Serif, and Code Pro)

but which color would be infrastructural? some things in the design process are the fruit of hasardous reading. we talked about ingrid burrington’s “networks of new york”, and there we found the colour that we deemed infrastructural: the neon orange used to mark network equipment in the street. this colour then reminded niels and maxigas of the color coding of UTP cables which use the ‘‘25-pair color code’’ industry standard. the lab operating through three different lenses—geopolitics, environment, and standards—it seemed interesting to reuse this color code to subtly mark produced publications, a clin d’œil as well to the color coded tubes of the Parisian Centre Pompidou which can be either esthetically appreciated without explanation.

while discussing how infrastructures are temporary, how antennas work, ulrike stumbled on the evolved antenna produced for NASA using genetic algorithms. even though we strongly question cybernetic principles of optimisation, we thought it interesting to involve a process reminding us of nature into the design. even though we did not rewrite the algorithm, principally because we lacked a fitness function—a function which would test how well the antenna works—the logo of the critical infrastructure lab is based on this evolved antenna. in the digital realm, on the website, we generate a new one every time the page is loaded to remind you—and us—that infrastructures are temporary.

a comma like trait in the logotype is inviting to ask if we are talking about the critical infrastructure—pause—lab or the critical—pause—infrastructure lab? the logotype, the text in the logo, is based on the very geometrical inter font.

there are some more subtle questions being asked through the design:

• on the website for example, a white trait is drawn, until we click somewhere, symbolising that when creating infrastructures, we are leaving traces—after all, it’s these traces that we interrogate in our work.
• in some of the print publications you might notice that page numbers subtly move, the further one advances in the publication. again, we are decentering, transforming, and marking progress.

We published our publication pipeline as well as our website theme under the GNU GPL v3 license.

https://www.conftool.org/aoir2023/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=328#paperID183

Niels ten Oever, Christoph Becker

University of Amsterdam – critical infrastructure lab

This paper argues that the production of ‘infrastructural insecurity’ is an inherent part of the standardization of information networks. Infrastructural insecurity is the outcome of an intentional process within infrastructural production, standardization, and maintenance that leaves end-users of the infrastructure vulnerable to attacks that benefit a particular actor. We ground this analysis in an interrogation of the responses to the disclosure of three security vulnerabilities in telecommunications networks, namely (1) a security flaw in Signaling System No. 7 (SS7) that allows for the data interception and surveillance, SMS interception and location tracking by third parties, (2) the lack of encryption of permanent identifiers that allowed for the deployment of rogue base stations, which allowed for man-in-the-middle attacks, resulting in interception of all voice and data traffic in a physical signal vicinity, and (3) the lack of forward secrecy between user-equipment and the home network, which allows for the decryption of current encrypted data stream if credentials were obtained in the past. To research the shaping of communication and infrastructure architectures in the face of insecurities, we develop a novel approach to the study of Internet governance and standard-setting processes that leverages web scraping and computer-assisted document set discovery software tools combined with document analysis. We bring these methods into conversation with theoretical approaches from material media studies, science and technology studies, and critical security studies. This is an important contribution because it asks fundamental questions about the adequacy and legitimacy of standardization processes.

https://www.conftool.org/aoir2023/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=375#paperID219

weise7, the home to critical engineering, is exhibiting phase shift, a work in collaboration with the critical infrastructure lab. the exhibition “frictions and frequencies” opened on 28 September by a demonstration of the work and a talk entitled “In Your Aerial” by Teresa Dillon, artist, researcher and Professor of City Futures, School of Arts, UWE, Bristol. the work that has been on display at the amsterdam public library (central station) previously.

Organising and chairing session on standards and infrastructure at the Netherlands Internet Governance Forum.

How does capitalism integrate hackers? Can hacking flourish outside capitalism? Why anti-capitalist movements need hackers? What connects hackers’ movements, scenes and projects to past and future struggles against capital?

Launch of monograph Resistance to the current: the dialectics of hacking in MIT Press’ Information Policy series in a session at the Chaos Communication Camp.

Session at the Chaos Communication Camp

Session at the Chaos Communication Camp

Presentation and discussion at the tbd.camp hacker convention on the politics of 5G standardisation, implementation and deployment.

Round table discussion organised by Open Future and the critical infrastructure lab at the university of amsterdam, department of media, bringing together experts from the academia, civil society and industry

Artificial Intelligence relies on data. Currently, we see a “bigger is better” mentality in both AI research and AI business models. This leads to ever more complex AI systems and massive data sets. But are they sustainable? Currently, the ensuing environmental, social and economic harms are ignored both by established data governance regimes and regulatory approaches such as the DSA/DMA, Data Act or AI Act. We have yet to find data governance approaches that adequately respond to the unsustainability of extractivist AI data collection and data processing and their underlying technical infrastructures. In this panel, we will discuss the global harms of AI systems and shortcomings of established data governance approaches, as well as new ideas for regulations geared towards more sustainable data governance and AI policies in an age where Artificial Intelligence is becoming a general-purpose technology.

the global harms of powering ai – towards a sustainable future of data use and governance @computers, privacy, and data protection (cpdp). View the panel here.

THE GREEN/DIGITAL/SOCIETY is a conference that gathers key actors who discuss the ecology, technology, human rights and policy in europe. see more: digital green society

Talk at workshop organised by the Missing Layers collaborative and Open Future, bringing together academia, civil society, and industry players.

programme download [pdf] // data centre walk flyer [pdf]

day 0 – april 13 – singel library, singel 425, 1012 wp amsterdam

09:00 coffee + registration

• 10:00 welcome and opening
• marieke de goede – dean of the faculty of humanities
• critical infrastructure lab

11:00 morning workshops: infrastructural futures

• sustainable computing infrastructures – michelle thorne
• identifying infrastructure gaps to shift power in the data economy – lisa gutermuth
• imagining the future: what should the next european commission do? – alek tarkowski, zuzanna warso and paul keller

12:30 lunch

13:30 afternoon workshops: maps and models

• data centre walk: the materiality of connectivity, centralization, data centers and data – yan cong
• mapping the network; critical mapping and new perspectives on internet infrastructure and standards – silke steets, nadine schabét, rené tuma, dinah van der geest
• semente – co-designing community-based digital policy – felipe schmidt fonseca & bernardo schepop
• free software user unions? – decentral1se
• permacomputing: are you working in the dark? introduction to permacomputing through a guided visualization and interactive game – ola bonati and lukas engelhardt

16:30 documentation, continuation and report back
17:30 surprise appearance
18:15 walk to waag
18:30 dinner and drinks (waag)


day 1 – april 14 – oude manhuispoort + bushuis

11:00 – 17:00 diy electronics jewelry workshop https://jewelryhacker.org/

09:30 welcome and opening – critical infrastructure lab
10:00 keynote 1 – standards – ksenia ermoshina
11:00 coffee break

11:15 morning panels

geopolitics: shifts, conflicts, and infrastructures

• migration information infrastructures: power, control and responsibility at a new frontier of migration research – fran meissner & linnet taylor
• “dongshuxisuan” (east-to-west computing resource transfer project) in china: an evolutionary reform on data infrastructure construction – chengbao jin
• the eu and internet standards – beyond the spin, a strategic turn? – clément perarnaud

standards: norms and methods

• data walking in the unheard city: sampling infrastructured devices with mobile apps – iain emsley
• the good infrastructures lab: user agency within, through and against infrastructures – thomas berker
• standardization as ethico-political project. dealing with the tension between the value of equal quality of standards and pluriversality – paula helm

environment: maintenance and resistance

• permitting/resisting the cloud: a comparative legal analysis of community resistance to fossil fuel infrastructure and data centers – jenna ruddock
• reuse commons: a toolkit to weave generous cities – felipe schmidt fonseca
• washout! environmental synchronization and infrastructural maintenance in the northern rocky mountains – sam p. kellogg

12:30 lunch
13:30 keynote 2 – environment – svitlana matviyenko
14:30 coffee break
14:45 report presentations

• exclusionary cultures of internet governance – corinne cath
• open source software as digital infrastructure – thomas streinz

15:45 keynote 3 – geopolitics – yu hong
16:45 coffee break
17:00 afternoon panels

geopolitics: european infrastructure politics

• eu digital diplomacy – digital technologies, standards, and regulation in times of geopolitical upheaval – julian ringhof
• reaching european stars with american clouds: rooting european digital sovereignty in gaia-x – andreas baur
• the russian conflict and its impact on the web pki – alexandra dirksen

standards: network paradigms

• rearticulating the digital public good: aesthetics and technics of the fifth internet – mila samdub
• digital technologies and sustainable development: the missing link – raúl zambrano
• an overview of internet censorship in eu – vasilis ververis

infrastructural futures

• on-line federation as a sociotechnical architecture – roel roscam abbing
• towards a historical, multi-dimensional, relational model of digital infrastructure – lai yi ohlsen

18:15 closing
20:30 drinks (ot301)

exhibit at the amsterdam public library (centre location), november 2022 – february 2023.

together with weise7 we organized an exhibit called ‘antennas and us’ in the amsterdam public library to show the invisible workings of telecommunications networks, and beamforming in particular. the exhibition runs from november 2022 until march 2023.

also shown at the exhibition are the low tech guides against high tech surveillance created by fieke jansen in collaboration with design collective idiotēs. use these low tech guides to become a digital explorer in your own city. see your neighborhood in a new light while exploring issues around facial recognition, thermal imaging, and wi-fi tracking.

The work was subsequently exhibited in Berlin in October 2023.

The possible establishment of a sovereign internet in Russia, European initiatives on ‘Digital Sovereignty’, and the conflict between China and the United States over Huawei equipment are rekindling the discussion on splinternets and the limits to global interconnectivity. This is an online event and is co-organized by Giganet.

Can the internet, the original network of networks, resist the contemporary strain, or was it built to accommodate these differences? In this talk three expert scholars on this topic, Daniel Lambach, Francesca Musiani and Fernanda Rosa, will give their views on the politics of global connection, its limitations, its future, and its discontent. Their talks will be discussed by one of the founders and prominent researchers of the fields of internet governance, Milton Mueller.

recording: politics of (dis)connection

you can find the schedule here

executive summary / tl;dr

• the critical infrastructure lab launches on april 13-14, 2023 at the university of amsterdam
• send in your session proposals for interactive workshops on april 13th (the lab day)
• send in your extended abstracts (academics) or position statements (practitioners) for the panel sessions on april 14th (the research day)
• send submissions to submission@criticalinfralab.net by march 1st (750-1000 words)

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“infrastructure makes worlds” — ned rossiter
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dear colleague, friend, comrade,

communications infrastructures constitute the invisible scaffolding of social life. largely concealed to their end-users, they are becoming the main stage where local and global economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical conflicts are played out. once established, infrastructures shape societies for decades to come.

on the 13th and 14th of april we will launch the critical infrastructure lab to discuss and develop visions of how communication infrastructures can serve the public interest — and we want to do that with you!

work in the critical infrastructure lab will focus on the development of new infrastructural futures that center people and planet over profit and capital. hosted at the university of amsterdam and led by fieke jansen, niels ten oever, and maxigas, the lab will bring together activists, advocates, scholars, policymakers, and industry actors. three analytical lenses of standards, geopolitics and environment will be applied to built an evidence base, investigate and develop infrastructural imaginaries, and create actionable research for infrastructures that serve the public interest.

about the launch event
the two-day event at the university of amsterdam will take place on the 13th and 14th of april. it will be a mix of keynote speakers, hands-on workshops, infrastructure walks, and panel discussions. both days will be in person, but day 1 will be streamed. for both days, we invite session proposals from activists, advocates, scholars, policymakers, and industry.

day zero, 13th of april, will be a hands-on lab day. it will offer space for interactive sessions on geopolitics, environment, and standards. we invite proposals for sessions of 2.5 hours. for instance, workshops, infrastructure walks, policy challenges, simulations, etc. pretty much everything that is not a panel or paper presentation.

day one, 14th of april, will have a more academic structure. it will kick off with three keynote presentations followed by panel sessions. the keynote speakers – ksennia ermoshina, svitlana matviyenko, and yu hong – will inspire and challenge us. the keynotes are followed by corinne cath, who will present her research on exclusionary cultures of internet governance.

the afternoon will be dedicated to simultaneous panel sessions in the areas of infrastructure and geopolitics, infrastructure and environment, and infrastructure and standards. academics can submit an extended abstract (research question, theory/literature, method, data, preliminary findings) and practitioners can submit a position statement. these contributions should be between 750 and 1000 words.

want to submit
do you have an idea you want to workshop, a discussion you want to host, or some research that you want to present?

state clearly in an email:

• your name and affiliation,
• whether you are submitting for day zero or day one,
• the research area (infrastructure and geopolitics, infrastructure and environment, or infrastructure and standards)
• include an abstract, position statement or a blurb for an interactive session!

send your submission to submission@criticalinfralab.net by march 1st.

the lab and its research is supported by the ford foundation, the internet society foundation, and omidyar network.

This workshop showcases the broad range of research methods used by Internet governance scholars from multiple disciplines to study Internet standard-setting bodies, such as the IETF, IEEE, W3C, WHATWG, 3GPP, ITU-T, ITU-R. more information and recording: https://www.giga-net.org/12-january-2022-giganets-workshop-on-internet-standard-setting-research-methods/

recording: infrastructural distortion and possession

podcast about our infrastructure walk in berlin

The IN-SIGHT.it People’s 5G Lab, together with the Amsterdam public library, organised a so-called “infrastructure walk” at the Bijlmer ArenA on Saturday, March 26. The goal of the walk was to uncover data flows in the city (Parks & Starosielski, 2015). Twenty-two people joined the walk to study datafication in urban areas. report about our infrastructure walk in amsterdam

How Interpretative Frames are Co-articulated on Social Media? An Instagram versus Parler Case Study @digital methods initiative winterschool 2021

cross platform analysis on 5g and conspiracy interpretative frames

This workshop aims to enable engineers and researchers alike to mine the IETF’s data sources in order to explore trends through the analysis of IETF data, such as email archives, I-Ds, RFCs, and the datatracker. This work can be used to derive insights into the inner workings of the process of standardization, participation, and governance. This workshop aims to bring together people who have already analyzed IETF data, those who are interested in the analysis of IETF data, and those who are interested in the results of such analysis as input for improvement of the IETF’s work. Read more: https://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/aid/