[Infrastructure-readinggroup] book selection time!

[Rone, Julia]

Dear all,
Sorry, I've been a bit of a lurker myself because I am going on maternity leave soon and had to finish a lot of stuff before that. That said, hopefully in the coming months I might have some time to read again and would love to join the discussions.
All books Niels proposed sound interesting to me but maybe especially 'Duress' and 'The Closed World'. If we go for the latter, this book might be relevant as well (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545129/balkan-cyberia/). It's very much a history from the periphery but quite interesting in terms of relations between socialism and capitalism, industrial espionage, and the way the politics of cybernetics can get out of hand.

I am also attaching two papers on infrastructure and politics that I've personally found very useful. Finally, I just finished a draft report on the democratization of cloud infrastructure policy (that's also the title:) that I would be very happy to discuss and get smart feedback on if it fits the topic.
Best,
Julia
________________________________
From: Infrastructure-readinggroup <infrastructure-readinggroup-bounces at criticalinfralab.net> on behalf of Thomas Streinz <tfs253 at nyu.edu>
Sent: 02 May 2023 13:35
To: infrastructure-readinggroup at criticalinfralab.net <infrastructure-readinggroup at criticalinfralab.net>
Subject: Re: [Infrastructure-readinggroup] book selection time!

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<mailto: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<mailto: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

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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<mailto:Aviva.deGroot at tilburguniversity.edu>

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