[Infrastructure-readinggroup] book selection time!

[Nadia Tjahja]

Hello!

Hope you had a good discussion, looking forward to joining again on Thursday!

The three books I’d be very keen on is China’s Telecommunication Revolution (I like books based on fieldwork), Duress (because it personally sounds like a tough topic to address to gain new perspectives), or Technologies of Speculation (because of the AI hype).

A book you may all have read already that I’ve had doubts about reading is Zuboff’s Surveillance Capitalism. I’ll be honest that when the book is mentioned, the content isn’t what strikes me, but the manner in which the book(‘s content) is used in discussion. You will hear her name mentioned by politicians, but I’ve found that critics (such as Morozov<https://thebaffler.com/latest/capitalisms-new-clothes-morozov>) of the book are really interesting.

Best,

Ms Nadia Tjahja
United Nations University – CRIS | Digital Governance Cluster | PhD Fellow
www.cris.unu.edu<http://www.cris.unu.edu/>
Vrije Universiteit Brussel | Brussels School of Governance | PhD Researcher
https://brussels-school.be/research/digitalisation-democracy-and-innovation

Communications Chair, Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet<https://www.giga-net.org/>)
YOUthDIG Coordinator, European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG)<https://www.eurodig.org/>

Recent publications
Tjahja, N., Meyer, T., Shahin, J., (2022). Who do you think you are? Individual stakeholder identification and mobility at the Internet Governance Forum. Telecommunications Policy, 46(10), 102410. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2022.102410

Tjahja, N., Meyer, T., & Shahin, J. (2021). What is civil society and who represents civil society at the IGF? An analysis of civil society typologies in internet governance. Telecommunications Policy, 45(6), 102141. doi:10.1016/j.telpol.2021.102141<https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2021.102141>

From: Infrastructure-readinggroup <infrastructure-readinggroup-bounces at criticalinfralab.net> on behalf of Niels ten Oever <mail at nielstenoever.net>
Date: Tuesday, 2 May 2023 at 10:15
To: infrastructure-readinggroup at criticalinfralab.net <infrastructure-readinggroup at criticalinfralab.net>
Subject: [Infrastructure-readinggroup] book selection time!
Hi all,

Thanks so much for your active attendance in the meet-up with Prof. Dr. DeSouza. I wanted to jumpstart the discussion on next readings. I have a couple of directions I would be interested in:

1. We're living in a time in which technology and infrastructure policy is picking up a lot of steam, so perhaps we should read about how this turned out in previous times and the interrelation with imperialism:

- The Closed World // Paul Edwards
- Telegraphic Imperialism // Deep Kanta Lahiri Choudhury
- China's Telecommunication Revolution // Eric Harwit
- The Computerization of Society // Simon Nora and Alain Minc
- Duress // Ann Laura Stoler

2. Another option is digging deeper into human rights and how they are(n't) useful for equitable infrastructure governance:

- Human Rights in an Unequal World // Samuel Moyn
- The Morals of the Market // Jessica Whyte

3. It seems the AI hype is not going away anytime soon (some are arguing it is going to be an 'infrastructural technology', meaning it will be integrating into everything) so perhaps we should dig in a bit?

- Resisting AI // Dan McQuillan
- Technologies of Speculation // Sun-Ha Hong

These are all books I already own (sorry, not sorry), so my bias should be obvious. Feel free to fiercely argue for or against any of these books, or add new books or categories.

Best,

Niels

--
Niels ten Oever, PhD
Co-Principal Investigator - critical infrastructure lab - University of Amsterdam
Assistant Professor - Department of European Studies - University of Amsterdam

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