[Infrastructure-readinggroup] book selection time!

[Thomas Streinz]

Dear Niels,

Thanks a lot for getting the ball rolling once again.

I very much like your list on technology and infrastructure policy. I would
be most keen on Paul Edwards's "The Closed World", because of the cold war
context and the focus on computation (and because the book has been staring
at me for months). My second preference would be "The Computerization of
Society" by Simon Nora and Alain Minc. The other books look great, too, but
I personally feel like the link between telegraphy and imperialism is
fairly well established and I'm worried that China's telecommunication
revolution (mobile phone adoption) stops when it gets interesting (switch
to smartphones and widespread datafication). I also think that the link to
industrial policy is very interesting - so +1 to Fieke's suggestion.

As a legal scholar, I'm not particularly keen on the human rights books.
Both are worth reading for sure (albeit for different reasons) but it takes
a lot of (additional) work to tie their findings to infrastructure
governance.

I agree that the AI topic is unlikely to go away. My preference would be
"Technologies of Speculation" by Sun-Ha Hong. On AI supply chain
regulation, there is a new promising paper by Jennifer Cobbe, Michael
Veale, and Jatinder Singh, that they are going to present at FAccT in
Chicago: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4430778.

All best,
Thomas



On Tue, May 2, 2023 at 5:25 AM Aviva de Groot <
Aviva.deGroot at tilburguniversity.edu> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I've been lurking, but will be able to join properly in a few weeks. Just
> a suggestion at this point to add to the HR list, in case we do one of
> those in the future:
>
> Shelley Wright // International Human Rights, Decolonisation and
> Globalisation: Becoming Human.
>
> Best wishes!
>
> Aviva.
>
> On 2 May 2023, at 10:44, Fieke Jansen <fieke at criticalinfralab.net> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I would be interested in reading about 1. technology and infrastructure
> policy. No preference of the order of the books. Maybe we can add a book
> /article on communication infrastructural as industrial policy. Which I
> feel ties all these books together. If people agree I can look around for a
> good reading about that.
>
> Fieke
>
> On 02/05/2023 10:11, Niels ten Oever wrote:
>
> 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
>
>
> --
> Fieke Jansen, PhD
> Postdoctoral Researcher - Media Studies Department - University of
> Amsterdam
> co-pi critical infrastructure lab
> Member Green Screen Climate Justice and Digital Rights coalition
>
> W: https://www.criticalinfralab.net/
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.criticalinfralab.net_&d=DwQFAg&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=6izWEoU5Au7hYN0VzT06cQ&m=EHMwhI7MjmBKfAtE-51WkMXNL5mQ54dn0kT0DvdX6vYlEEjczT3WP5_y09EpgT_M&s=_Zgp4tMx-kifEDbji5R-o4BH3fY8m3mvil6fCvoNhOQ&e=>
> E: fieke at criticalinfralab.net
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>
>
>
> *
> Aviva de Groot
>
> Postdoctoral Researcher
> PhD Candidate
>
> Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT)
> Tilburg University
>
> Aviva.deGroot at tilburguniversity.edu
>
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