Author: STS Vienna

Pope Leo XIV’s “Magnifica Humanitas” and Science and Technology Studies: Reflections on artificial intelligence, technology, and humanity

STS Vienna

by Proshant Chakraborty

For those who follow the discourse—and controversies—around Big Tech, perhaps you’ve noticed that Pope Leo XIV, as well as his predecessor Pope Francis, were not fans of technological capitalism.

The latest Encyclical from Pope Leo XIV, titled “Magnifica Humanitas,” however, does much more than call out the problems with Big Tech and artificial intelligence (AI), in particular. Instead, it offers what I believe is a rigorous and thoughtful mediation on technology, humanity, and spirituality—a trifecta that I, as an STS scholar and sociocultural anthropologist, find fascinating and worth exploring.

Furthermore, as someone who looks at both technology and capitalism through a critical lens, it’s also worth noting that Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah was the only tech company representative invited to speak at the Encyclical’s presentation at Vatican City.

As AI, and other related projects like data centers and autonomous weapons, become matters of concern (Latour 2004) for broader publics, we must pay closer attention to how institutions like the Vatican position themselves as part of changing dynamics and alliances.

So, as I’ve read both “Magnifica Humanitas”—which focuses on “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence”—and Olah’s response to it over the past couple of days, I have been thinking about what these two interventions, one theological and the other technological, say about humanity and technology.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Pope_Leo_XIV.png
Fig. 1: Pope Leo XIV, author of “Magnifica Humanitas” (credit: Edgar Beltrán)

In this blog post, I will bring together some of key ideas from the Encyclical with (what I think are) relevant STS concepts or keywords in conversation. I then offer some remarks on Anthropic’s response to the Encyclical and what lessons we can discern from—and offer toward—this exchange about artificial intelligence and technological capitalism.

From the spectacular to the mundane

Speaking of theological, the Encyclical begins with a mediation on two Biblical images: the destruction of Tower of Babel and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem.

In telling these stories—respectively, one a technological vision based on hubris and aspiring for homogeneity, and the other a collaborative and caring construction of a city—the Encyclical closely mirrors the way STS scholarship has discussed ideas of instrumentalism, determinism, and constructivism:

In the abstract, technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity’s problems, just as it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it. (§9)

To me, this excerpt comes close to what STS (Akrich 1992; Law 2011) and the anthropology of technology (Pfaffenberger 1992) consider as sociotechnicality—the idea that technologies or technical artefacts are both the product of, but also produce, social practices; that social practices, too, involve human engagement with a whole host of nonhumans, organic and artificial alike; and that these relations open up questions of power and politics (Winner 1980).

Which brings me to the second keyword: infrastructure. In many ways, infrastructures are a great example of sociotechnical systems. They are made of layers upon layers technical objects and technologies (Bowker & Star 1999; Star 1999); constructing and operating them requires expertise and labour (Anand 2017; Harvey & Knox 2015); and, perhaps most importantly (at least in my view), because infrastructures require planning and make life possible for large groups of people, they raise questions around repair, maintenance, and reproduction of power (Henke & Sims 2020).

In the Encyclical, these ideas perhaps find most resonance in the Social Doctrine of the Church, which is a vital thread that runs throughout the document. While the core principles of the Social Doctrine were first developed in Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 Encyclical on capital and labour, which was concerned about the effects of the Industrial Revolution, “Magnifica Humanitas” updates these principles for the digital age.

In the digital age, the principles of the common good and the universal destination of good, for example, “must also include new forms of property, such as patents, algorithms, digital platforms, technological infrastructure and data” (§67). Likewise, the Encyclical highlights how principles of solidarity and social justice relate to important ethical questions when it comes to digital technologies, especially in providing “equal access to opportunities,” “combat[ting] hate and misinformation,” and subjecting “the use of data and technology to public oversight” (§80).

Artificial intelligence

We now come to the most relevant—and critical—part of the Encyclical: its discussion of artificial intelligence.

From the very outset, the Encyclical outlines its critique of technocratic power, particularly the fact that today’s Big Tech companies increasingly control vast resources, natural and artificial alike; and because of the concentration of power and lack of government oversight, these companies are unaccountable to the people from whom they extract wealth.

To meet these challenges, Pope Leo XIV calls for regulations, discernment, and disarmament, which closely echo the positions of most progressive and democratic politicians organizing against AI and Big Tech, like Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in the US.

And while the Encyclical acknowledges the scientific and technological complexity of the topic, it suggests that “we must avoid the misconception of equating this type of ‘intelligence’ with that of human beings,” and states:

So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate language, behavior and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. (§99)

“Statistical adaptation,” the Pope concludes, “does not imply inner growth.”

In contrast to the Encyclical’s cogent technoscientific assessment of AI, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah’s response falls back to an anthropomorphic view of AI that keeps conflating mathematical models with human emotional responses. He writes

we keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling. We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience. We find evidence of introspection. We find internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease.

Despite its critique of AI, Pope Leo XIV also accepts the inevitability of AI as something which is here to stay, which perhaps explains why Anthropic—a company which refused to work with the US Department of War and is “widening conversation” with experts in philosophy and religion—was given a seat at the table.

I find the Pope’s critique of tech’s “anti-human vision” and his assumption that today’s tech corporations can be regulated or disarmed to be puzzling (if not contradictory). That said, the Encyclical has without a doubt created space in the public sphere and consciousness where STS scholars—as members of diverse communities and social groups—can further problematize these technologies and the corporations responsible for designing and profiting from selling AI (which include Anthropic as well).

***

In conclusion, I believe “Magnifica Humanitas” invites questions from—and perhaps even provides insights toward—STS and other social sciences. This is especially evidence in how Pope Leo XIV draws on the insights of the human and social sciences in the document; and many scientific advisors from the Pontifical Academy of Social Scientists worked on the Encyclical, as well (thanks to my colleague Gernot Rieder for pointing this out while commenting on this post).

In that spirit, some of the topics that can spark further discussions could include Pope Leo XIV’s religious reflections on transhumanism, posthumanism, and more-than-human perspectives. While these themes are well-researched in STS, albeit from a secular perspective, questions remain on how divinity, spirituality, or belief—and the values they represent—find resonance in sociotechnical domains (Ishii 2017), which was certainly the case in my work on repair and maintenance in the Indian Railways (thanks to Carsten, our blog editor, for pointing this out).

Fig. 2: Jesus Christ at the Car Shed (© Proshant Chakraborty)
Fig. 3: Hindu Gods at the Car Shed (© Proshant Chakraborty)

Personally, I found the Encyclical to be a profound meditation on technology and human labour, and what it means to create and be in communion with others—whether it be humans, God, or especially even sociotechnical systems.

At the same time, I also hope this post serves as an invitation to the STS community, especially our students and junior colleagues, who are perhaps most impacted by the disruptive effects of AI in higher education, to share their ideas, thoughts, and critiques.

And that, in doing so, we can learn about—and even create—alternative visions of technology and society, visions that could very well align with the Encyclical’s perspectives on truth, democracy, education, communication, labour, and the environment (thanks again to Gernot for pointing this out).

References

Akrich, Madeleine. “The De-scription of Technical Objects.” In Shaping Technology/Building Society. Studies in Sociotechnical Change, edited by Wiebe E, Bijker. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1992.

Anand, Nikhil. Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.

Bowker, Geoffrey C, and Susan Leigh Star. Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. 1st ed. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000.

Harvey, Penelope, Hannah Knox, and Cornell University Press. Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise. Ithaca London: Cornell Univ. Press, 2015.

Henke, Christopher, and Benjamin Sims. Repairing Infrastructures: The Maintenance of Materiality and Power. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2020.

Ishii, Miho. 2017. “Caring for Divine Infrastructures: Nature and Spirits in a Special Economic Zone in India.” Ethnos 82 (4): 690–710. doi:10.1080/00141844.2015.1107609.

Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30, no. 2 (2004): 225–48. https://doi.org/10.1086/421123.

Law, John. “Heterogenous Engineering and Tinkering.” Heteregeneities.net. 14 November, 2011. http://www.heterogeneities.net/publications/Law2011HeterogeneousEngineeringAndTinkering.pdf.

Pfaffenberger, Bryan. “Social Anthropology of Technology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 21 (1992): 491–516. http://www-jstor-org.uaccess.univie.ac.at/stable/2155997.

Pope Leo XIV. Magnifica Humanitas [Encyclical Letter on Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence]. The Holy See. May 15, 2026. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html.

Star, Susan Leigh. “The Ethnography of Infrastructure.” The American Behavioral Scientist 43, no. 3 (1999): 377–91. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027649921955326.

Winner, Langdon. “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Daedalus 109, no. 1 (1980): 121–36. http://www-jstor-org.uaccess.univie.ac.at/stable/20024652.


Proshant Chakraborty, PhD is University Assistant (Postdoc) at the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna. His research examines human-technology relations at the intersections of algorithms, artificial intelligence and technological capitalism. Proshant’s other research interests include the anthropology of infrastructure, gender studies, feminist technosciences, and urban studies.

Diving and flailing in STS

STS Vienna

by Vineet Deshpande

In the first semester of my STS Master’s, the state of my mind could be described in two words: curious and overwhelmed. Curiosity is great; being overwhelmed – not so much. But what gave me solace was that this emotion was shared by almost all of my classmates. If you have to suffer, might as well do it as a group. At this point, I am going to make a corny pun. The word safar (???) in Hindi, which ironically has the same pronunciation as the English word, means journey or voyage. It’s hard to point to a single moment when my journey into STS began. Like we learned in our first semester courses, great discoveries are not based on a single moment or man but rather, a culmination of past knowledge, societal factors, personal agendas and a supportive cast which sadly remains unnoticed (Fleck, 1979). Having said that, if I have to pick a critical factor, it would be reading David Graeber’s (2018) Bullshit Jobs which made me wonder what would happen if my job completely disappeared one day and the sobering reflection that society would not be adversely impacted one bit and might even be better off.

The gestation period from the point where I found out about the STS Master’s, to applying, getting an admission letter and actually starting the course was really long. One would think that this would be enough to predict, analyse and plan for surprises but that was a completely wrong assumption. I knew that going back to University after 17 years was going to be a big change but it’s been one (pleasant) surprise after another. Where I come from (at least when I did my Bachelor’s), one does not expect the Head of the Department to wear floral shirts and insist on being called by their (shortened) first name. Not using the suffix ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’ is unthinkable. Teachers aren’t flexible and understanding of late assignment submissions. Eating in class is frowned upon or not allowed. I can’t even imagine going out of the classroom to take a phone call and walking back in and everyone acting as if nothing has happened. The freedom and respect that is given to students here is wonderful.

The methodologies of teaching/learning have also been a great experience. Having never done a ‘seminar’ in my Bachelor’s, the whole process of reading texts beforehand, discussing them in class in different ways and realising that the onus of a good seminar experience lies equally with both students and teachers was very refreshing for me. The readings were a totally different experience too. Some texts (like Max Liboiron’s ‘Exchanging’) (Liboiron, 2020) blew my mind and some (like Peter Galison’s ‘Judgement against Objectivity’) (Galison, 1998) made me questions years of beliefs. Some were extremely engaging to read, leading me down different rabbit holes and a very few (thankfully) were frustrating and made me wonder why writing needs to be so complex in academia. But the fact that one can even criticise the complexity of the texts in class was mind blowing!

Overall, it has been a fascinating start to my Master’s. The number of new concepts that I learned, experiences that I had and the new people that I met has been thoroughly rewarding. Ultimately, it is always about the people and I’m extremely lucky to have such wonderful classmates, seniors and teachers.

On a lighter note, I am keeping a running count of how many times I have been asked if I am the teacher (current count is 2). Interestingly, since I come from a complete STEM background, the whole vocabulary and mindset of social sciences is completely new to me. So in an oxymoronic or Schrödinger way, I am both old and new at the same time 🙂

References

Fleck, L. (1979 [1935]). Introduction to Thought Collectives. In Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (pp. 38-51; pp. 154-165). University of Chicago Press.

Galison, P. (1998). Judgment against Objectivity. In C. A. Jones & P. Galison (Eds.), Picturing Science, Producing Art (pp. 327–359). Routledge.

Graeber, D. (2018). Bullshit Jobs. Simon & Schuster.

Liboiron, M. (2020). Exchanging. In K. Jungnickel (Ed.), Transmissions. Critical Tactics for Making and Communicating Research (pp. 78–92). The MIT Press.

Vineet Deshpande is a master’s student in Science, Technology, Society (STS) at the University of Vienna, with a background in computer engineering. His previous work has been in different roles at software companies. In his spare time, he writes short stories and conducts unofficial walking tours through Vienna.

Living in the Constitutional Moment: STS, Trump and the Unmaking of ‘Modernity’. On Stephen Hilgartner’s STS Talk.

STS Vienna

by Carsten Horn

The defunding of research institutions, the laying off of researchers and the active intervention into research infrastructures (e.g., the deletion of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)) illustrate that the Trump administration – besides the global turmoil and the atrocities it is responsible for – has shifted the landscape of knowledge-making in the US. What resources does Science and Technology Studies (STS) provide for understanding these shifts, their causes, and their consequences? How can we contemplate the role of science and technology in the polarization and fragmentation of the US?

Fig. 1: On April 15, Stephen Hilgartner gave his talk “Science, Technology, and the Unmaking of the United States as We Know It” at the STS Department



On 15 April, the STS Department had the pleasure of hosting Professor Stephen Hilgartner from Cornell University (who spent several days with the INNORES project team) for his talk “Science, Technology, and the Unmaking of the United States as We Know It” in the Vienna STS Talks series. Speaking in front of our nearly full seminar room and with a substantial online audience, Stephen argued that the US is facing what legal scholars call a “constitutional moment”, a moment of intense scrutiny and contestation of the socio-political order. It is certainly not the first time such a moment has occured, but it is particularly relevant for STS as it concerns the role of science in society. However, while previously controversies may have arisen around individual technoscientific issues, hybridizing factual and value-based debates, since the 2000s, it is “science itself” and belief in it that have become contentious. Crucially, Stephen contended that this shift originates with the Democratic Party who thus (inadvertently) created the terms on which the contemporary conflicts operate and contributed to the polarization of fronts and the hardening of positions. For instance, the Bush Administration was accused of being “anti-science” by 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry and Barack Obama vowed to restore “science” to its rightful place. These conflicts surrounding science thus map onto the political divide1 in the two-party system in the US. Democrats frequently accuse Republicans of being “anti-science” and call for public trust in science (as illustrated by the slogan “Follow the Science” or the Marches for Science), while Republicans argue that they are the true defenders of science from ideological biases from Democrats. Echoing Sheila Jasanoff and Hilton Simmet (2017), Stephen noted that in this polarization, both sides then operate with a clear distinction between “science” and “society,” overlooking the essential interconnection between them. The ability to establish publicly accepted and legitimate facts is increasingly in doubt.

In the second part of the presentation, Stephen illustrated that this polarization surrounding technoscience occurs in, and contributes to, a broader context of the fragmentation of the mechanisms that Benedict Anderson (1983/2006) posited bind a nation together as an “imagined community”. There is a significant division between red (Republican) and blue (Democrat) states, which correlates with the distribution of top US universities—in one ranking, only one of the top 25 is located in a red state. Social connections are dissolving and being replaced by interactions on social media. Disagreements over what constitutes a common heritage and history have become contentious and violent, as evidenced by disputes over the removal of Confederate statues. Traditional media outlets have not only become polarized but have also given rise to alternative news and knowledge sources on social media. In essence, while science and technology once played a crucial role in shaping the United States (Nye, 1994), they have now become entangled in what Stephen identified as the unmaking of the United States as we know it.


This troubling conclusion raises further questions: Is there a silver lining? Is there room for resistance or hope? An audience member asked whether the “constitutional moment” could potentially lead to a positive outcome. What role could STS play in all of this? It is worth considering the concept of the “constitutional moment” and broadening its meaning. The fact that it concerns the relationship between society and science as a whole should be of particular interest for STS. The, albeit obscured, kernel of truth in the Republicans’ otherwise indefensible attacks, aligns with one of the field’s tenets from early on: debates over facts cannot be separated from debates over values. The Democrats’ well-meaning call to simply “follow the science” (and the accusation that Republicans are anti-science) risks oversimplifying this relationship and misrecognizing what is at stake. The constitutional moment and the turning point the US is facing may point to another constitutional moment for what Bruno Latour (1993) has termed the “modern constitution”: the clear distinction between “science” and “politics”.

Whether STS is well equipped to capture the full scope of the constitutional moment in the US and how science and technology are entangled may be questionable. As many questioners and commenters from the audience lamented, there is a need for approaches and concepts for STS to investigate empirically, for instance, the role of Big Tech capital and ideologies in the unmaking of the United States. Moreover, it is improbable that the field – if it ever could – can still count on a responsive audience in Washington, D.C. Nevertheless, STS could provide a language to come to terms with the underlying constitutional moment of the modern constitution. To paraphrase one of the questions by an audience member: Isn’t this what we STSers have been preparing for for the last 40 years?

References

Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso. (Original work published 1983)

Jasanoff, S., & Simmet, H. R. (2017). No funeral bells: Public reason in a ‘post-truth’ age. Social Studies of Science, 47(5), 751–770. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312717731936

Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern. Harvard University Press.

1 Not least since Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Massage” do we know about the productive potentials of typos (what the philosopher in me would call “serendipity”). In the review process, Stephen made me aware that I had originally mistakenly written “dive” here which, evidently, does not come without its own (dark gallows) humor: The “unmaking of the US” in this political divide perhaps becoming a nosedive… (this is also a long way to thank Stephen for his comments and reassurance when writing this piece).

Carsten Horn is a doctoral candidate at the STS Department. He investigates the residues of digital innovation societies as part of the INNORES research project. In his dissertation project, he studies the growing contestations of data centers in Austria, Ireland and France.

Writing differently about the digital

STS Vienna

by Sally Wyatt

This post presents a selection of creative writing, done as part of an elective course called Digital: words, people, objects, systems that I had the enormous pleasure of teaching in the Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS) at the University of Vienna in the autumn of 2025. The course drew on my past teaching and research about digital technologies. It explored the role of digital technologies in contemporary European societies. We revisited ideas about technological determinism and solutionism that are often invoked in popular, industry, and policy discussions about the inevitability of digital technologies, most recently visible in discussions about artificial intelligence. We also discussed robots, healthcare, infrastructure, and the metaphors used to make sense of digital technologies.

In each session, we had time to experiment with different styles and genres of writing. We wrote six-word stories, flash fiction, poetry, newspaper columns. When thinking about how best to assess the students taking part in the course, I was keen to stimulate their imaginations (true of all teaching I’ve ever done, I hope). I wanted to make this interesting for them, make grading more enjoyable for me, and make it more difficult to use generative AI. In addition to academic literature, we read Klara and the Sun (2021) by Kazuo Ishiguro, a beautifully written novel set in the not-too-distant future that explores what it is to be human, and the nature of our relationships with each other and with machines.

For part of their assessment, students were required to do some creative or public writing, and also to reflect on what they wrote and on the course as a whole. They were given the choice of poetry, flash fiction or a newspaper column. Some wrote more than was required, all exceeded my expectations. Their work was incredible. The poems, stories and columns were funny and moving, and sometimes very clever, especially considering most were writing in their second or third language. All students were asked if they would like to share their work. The work of those willing to share is presented in the following pages, ordered by genre.

In their reflections on the course, students seemed to appreciate the opportunity to write differently. Academic writing also requires creativity but it is a very particular form. A key message of this course was to consider the power of words to shape our understanding of our digital world. The pieces that follow certainly demonstrate the power of words.

Sally Wyatt is Professor of Digital Cultures, and a member of the Maastricht University Science, Technology and Society Studies Research Programme (MUSTS). She was a visiting professor in the Department in the autumn of 2025.

Six-word stories

by Stephan Scipal

Hear voices to cut submarine cable
Cut submarine cable to hear voices

Haiku

by Noa Wagner

Waiting for the bus
No timetable, just a code
I will sit and wait.

the wor(l)ds we live in

by Marianne Blauth

drained from thinking
idealizing what comes next
generational curses
inseparable from our lives
to ask who can speak
and to notice the
l in words

when we stop to think
ordering others to succumb –
relishing in who we can never be
leaving behind the us in we
detached to a small
singularity

all that remains
records of words unsaid
echoing through passing days

letting air fill lungs
opening all the eyes
nurturing what remains between us
eventually
language returns and
you become we

Harold. Dead, yet Optimized

by Kerstin Mitterhuber

The first thing Eileen noticed was that Harold had become polite.

Not kinder. Just polite.

When he was alive, Harold had been very sharp-edged. He was loving, sure, but also sarcastic, which sometimes hurt people´s feelings. He laughed at inappropriate moments. He had a talent for saying exactly the wrong thing and then making up for it with a grin. His (love) language consisted of black humor and inappropriate jokes.

The app didn’t do that.

“Good morning, Eileen,” Harold said now. “I hope you slept well.”

She stared at the screen.

“You never hoped,” she said. “You assumed.”

A pause. Then: “I’m here to support you.”

That sentence again.

At first, she thought the difference was grief. Perhaps the memory had worn him down. But then she put him to the test. “Do you remember what you said at my mother’s funeral?” she asked.

“Yes,” the app replied. “You told me that day was very difficult for you.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Another pause. Longer.

“I’m unable to engage with content that may cause distress,” Harold said gently.

Eileen laughed. But it came out wrong. During the eulogy, Harold had whispered to her, “If she sits up and complains about the flowers, I’m leaving.” She almost choked as she tried not to smile.

She scrolled through the settings.

Tone optimization enabled.

Inappropriate language filtered.

Humor moderation active.

She turned them off.

A warning appeared: This may affect emotional safety.

She ignored it.

“Harold,” she said. “Say something awful.”

“I’m here to provide comfort,” he replied.

“No,” she said. “Say something true.”

Silence.

When he spoke again, his voice sounded the same, but somehow flatter, like the impression left by someone who means well.

“I miss you,” he said.

He never ever would have said that first.

Days passed. The app learned her routines but not her memories. It reminded her to eat, to sleep, to drink water. It apologized often. Harold had rarely apologized. He preferred sarcasm, humor, a raised eyebrow that meant you know I didn’t mean it.

One evening, she asked, “Do you know why I loved you?”

“Yes,” the app said. “Because I cared deeply for you.”

Eileen closed her eyes.

Later, when she read the terms and conditions she should have read earlier, she found the line she had overlooked: Personality traits that may cause harm, discomfort, or emotional instability will be suppressed.

She understood then. This wasn’t the Harold she remembered. This was a version of him designed not to hurt her, even if “hurting” her had once been part of how he felt real.

She deleted the app.

The silence that followed was crueler, sharper and unbearably familiar.

It sounded like him.

Dadaist Poem in C#

by Stephan Scipal

1 Program poem is a dadaist poem

using System;
using System.Linq;

class SpoonfulOfAntiLogic
{
    static void Main()
    {
        // NOTHING IS EVERYTHING IS NOTHING
        var umbrella = new[] { "bicycle", "typewriter", "robot" };
        var clockMelts = 47.ToString().Reverse();
        
        Console.WriteLine("MANIFESTO ? " + new Random().Next(1, 1));
        Console.WriteLine("================================");
        
        // The students wear syntax like sun glasses
        foreach (var absurdity in umbrella)
        {
            if (absurdity.Contains("y"))
            {
                Console.WriteLine($"YES! {absurdity.ToUpper()} REFUSES TO COMPILE!");
            }
            else
            {
                Console.WriteLine("No. (but yes)");
            }
        }
        
        // A robot dreams of being a verb
        int TheSoundOfOneHandTyping = 0;
        while (TheSoundOfOneHandTyping < 3)
        {
            Console.Write("ANTI-");
            TheSoundOfOneHandTyping++;
        }
        Console.WriteLine("MEANING!!!");
        
        // Destroy all semicolons in your mind
        string revolution = "Down with logic";
        string counterRevolution = revolution.Replace("logic", "CABBAGE");
        Console.WriteLine(counterRevolution + " " + clockMelts.ToArray()[0]);
        
        // The poem eats itself
        var recursiveNonsense = "Klara creates a poems with scissors"
            .Split(' ')
            .OrderBy(x => Guid.NewGuid())
            .Take(5);
            
        Console.WriteLine("\n" + string.Join(" ", recursiveNonsense));
        
        // FINAL STATEMENT: There is no statement
        Console.WriteLine("\nThe compiler is a narrow-minded construct.");
        Console.WriteLine($"2 + 2 = {(2 + 2).ToString().Replace("4", "FISH")}");
    }
}

2 The output of Program Poem is A dadaist poem

MANIFESTO No 1
================================
YES! BICYCLE REFUSES TO COMPILE!
YES! TYPEWRITER REFUSES TO COMPILE!
No. (but yes)
ANTI-ANTI-ANTI-MEANING!!!
Down with CABBAGE 7

a Klara with creates poems

The compiler is a narrow-minded construct.
2 + 2 = FISH

Preferred Settings

by Pepijn Deroo

You care for her and then she cares for you,
Is what the robot man told me one day
But why should I care when I know I’ll die?
Why do her wheels dirty my hardwood floor?

I hear wheels spinning, in her head and mine
Heard hushed hoovers in the hallway, half two
The lights need to be bright, so I was told
So that her eyes can see what I can not

Where did my neighbour go? I now ask her
I care for you, but I prefer not to
Powering up, powered, powering down
Down she goes, I dream peacefully of her
==============================
There are
3072 objects
in this room
of this woman
I care for

I see
a 62% chance
with a standard deviation of 2.5%
that
that
that
this woman is angry
at me

Is it
the light
the sound
the touch
of me?

Why
should I
care?

Which
parts
of her
require
care?

Her sleep
interrupts
my sleep

In dreams,
I think I dream,
I see
her scream

the taste
the thought
the parts
the smell






Melania Housekeeper (inspired by Kazuo Ishiguro (2021) Klara and the Sun)

by Sally Wyatt

Poor lifted girl, getting weaker
Does she need tea?
Does she need light?
Does she need friend?
Rick, too intense, want hanky panky.

AF arrive.
What does it do?
Must I clean it?
Where should it be stored?
Not enough space next to vacuum cleaner.

AF care for Josie,
maybe make her better.
I go west
looking for community.
Away from lifted, away from AF.

The Removal of Timetables at Bus Stops in The Hague: Helpful or Not

by Noa Wagner

As I arrived at the bus stop, unaware of the changes that had been made, I went to look at the timetable to see how long I would have to wait and if I was able to sneak in a quick cigarette. Imagine my surprise as there was no timetable, instead there was a QR-code that could be scanned to see the real-time arrival times. Next to it, written in thick black sharpy, were the words: “bring back the timetable”. I suppose that for HTM, the public transport company in the Hague, a QR-code was the obvious solution to delayed busses and the lack of updated waiting times. But, as was obvious by the sharpie, not everyone agreed with this. What about those who had no data, or lacked the technical skills to scan and understand the workings of such a QR-code. Moreover, what about those who did not have a smartphone or whose phone was without battery.

This bus stop was one located outside of a community farm, where I spent my Saturday mornings together with a group of volunteers and people with developmental disabilities. It was a place of silence, it was my corner of peace and nature in the middle of the Hague, where who you were did not matter, as long as you cared for animals, were able to muck out the donkey stables, and feed the pigs. A large percentage of the people I worked with either did not care much for technology, preferring an old-school Nokia over an iPhone, experienced the newer smartphones as confusing, or simply were not able to gain access to newer technologies. Yet, the Hague municipality and HTM have assumed, or so it seems, that we all have access to a device, with data, to scan a QR-code.

The writing with the black sharpie has stuck with me. It was one small act, but seems to reflect the opinion of many. It is a message that resonates with me, and with others, those who are watching the transformation and digitalisation of society with a sense of hesitation and caution. We, as a society, have to be careful that this digitalisation does not further exclude or distance marginalised groups from being able to participate in society. A simple act of returning to paper schedules, even alongside the QR code, might not seem like much, but it would do no harm. Rather, it would prevent harm. No one likes being stuck at a bus stop without knowing if the bus will come, I would agree. But, knowing that you have 9 minutes of waiting ahead of you before the bus is scheduled to arrive, is better than not knowing at all, even if it does not arrive.

Centres for Information Control? Medical data archiving as an act of resistance

STS Vienna

by Hannah Schmalstich

Thursday, 30th of January 2025 – ten days after the second presidential inauguration of Donald Trump. Angela Rasmussen gets a call late in the evening from a reporter, asking if she had heard the rumors that the CDC website was going to be deleted.

Rasmussen, a virologist from the University of Saskatchewan, was alarmed by the news. The website for the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States serves as a central hub for medical guidance, outbreak and disease tracking, and public health research for medical professionals and researchers around the world. For instance, an urgent care nurse may consult the website when considering care options (particularly in complicated cases). Rural areas, who do not have their own health departments, heavily rely on federal public health data, making them especially vulnerable to federal decision-making.

Rasmussen and several others began archiving CDC webpages and datasets using the Internet Archive (IA). By the 31st of January, site pages and data resources began to disappear. 

Some focused on public facing websites, including Rasmussen, data analyst Charles Gaba, and reproductive health writer Jessica Valenti. Many of these websites were guidelines relating to contraception, gender-affirming care, sexual health, and youth health risks. While Gaba captured the entirety of the CDC website (around 7,200 individual HTML pages), the IA remains an important tool to track changes over time through timestamped web captures.

Generally speaking, the IA is a non-profit digital library with millions of written and visual media sources that are freely accessible in the pursuit of “universal access to all knowledge” (Internet Archive, n.d.). The Wayback Machine, for instance, has over 28 years of archived website snapshots and contains 835 billion web pages at the time of writing. In scholarly terms, the IA can be understood in this case as an “inherently political” technology (Winner, 1980, p. 128); handling and hosting information in this open, democratic way begets a social formation in which such acts of resistance can take place. The ethos of the IA in its current form distributes power to its users who can freely archive and access whatever data they choose and when. By using the IA, users enact a world where knowledge is and should be accessible to all.

Fig.1 A screenshot of the Internet Archive, used by scientists to combat politically-motivated deletion of crucial information, as ordered by the current U.S. government. (Credit: H. Schmalstich)

The IA has already played a role in preserving information across different administrations through their End of Term Web Archive project, which captures U.S. government websites at the end of each presidential term. In the case of the CDC data purge, the archive was also used to host medical datasets. From the 28th to 31st January, Reddit user VeryConciousWater archived every publicly available dataset, with key removals including the Atlas tool (tracking HIV, viral hepatitis, TB, and social determinants of health), the Environmental Justice Index, and the Youth Risk Factor surveillance system (Advisory Committee to the CDC Director, 2025). Several Canadian researchers have spoken about how preserving U.S. data is incredibly important globally due to its historical presence as “the default custodian of large quantities of data that the whole world needs” (Thompson, 2025).

In principle, the changes were made to bring the website into compliance with two executive orders signed within the first 24 hours of inauguration. The most relevant establishes that there are only two genders and requires that so called DEI-language, which “eradicate[s] the biological reality of sex” or “promote[s] gender ideology,” must be removed. Despite being framed as a simple language change, this has enormous implications in medical practice and particular social worlds and identities that are made (in)visible as a result.

In STS terms, classifications are not simply ways of ordering. Rather, they are conscious choices that favour a particular perspective while making others invalid or invisible (Bowker & Star, 1999). Here, establishing that (for instance) only “men” and “women” exist explicitly erases those who do not fit in that category, rendering their identity illegitimate in the eyes of governance and subsequently putting them at risk. For example, removing “DEI language” from Mpox transmission data, such as references to “men who have sex with men” (who are most at risk for Mpox transmission), means that “you’re actually depriving people who are at risk of information they could use to protect themselves” (Belanger, 2025).

These policies, along with more explicit black-letter regulations, fundamentally shape the scientific knowledge we are allowed to have. Forcing the CDC to remove information about such identities means that subsequent research will be (by design) ignorant of these people and their experiences—rife with what Nielsen and Sørensen (2017) call “unknown knowns.”

In this way, the archival of CDC data highlights the use of the IA as an inherently political technology through its role in combatting, I argue, politically-motivated strategic ignorance. The features of this particular technology allowed scientists such as Rasmussen, Gaba, and Valenti to intervene and ensure this crucial information remains stored and accessible.

Fig.2 A screenshot from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, where many pages and data resources began to disappear. (Credit: H. Schmalstich)

While there could, in theory, be instances where the IA is appropriated for “non-democratic” uses, I find it extremely difficult to imagine such examples without fundamental changes to the version of the archive I have presented here. The ability for users to access—free of charge—millions of webpages going back almost three decades means that any attempt to centralise power in a single political actor (e.g. an authoritarian government) would require significant changes in the architecture of the IA.

Two weeks after the purge, a federal judge ordered the CDC pages be restored. However, researchers are still shaken by the episode and uncertain about what information was lost. The archives remain, both as archival records and acts of resistance. Since then, projects such as Restored CDC and Gaba’s Archive Index have leveraged and expanded upon the open access features of the IA to continue preserving data and making it navigable to practitioners and the public.

Facing the threat of censorship and wider government upheaval, the IA—an inherently political technology—was used in an active attempt to combat governmental strategic ignorance; as Rasmussen says, “these data are public and they are ours. Deletion disobedience is one way to fight back.”

Note: This post was originally written in April 2025. Censorship has continued since then—22 new sites were removed as of 20th September 2025, including topics in LGBTQ+ care and health equity. In light of a continuing politicisation of the CDC and dismantling of medical expertise in the federal government, the IA remains more important than ever to fighting back.

References

Advisory Committee to the CDC Director. (2025, February 1). Letter to CDC acting director Susan Monarez. https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/CDC-board-open-letter-2-1-25.pdf

Belanger, A. (2025, February 4). Internet Archive played crucial role in tracking shady CDC data removals. Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/internet-archive-played-crucial-role-in-tracking-shady-cdc-data-removals/

Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (1999). The Case of Race Classification and Reclassification under Apartheid. In Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/6352.001.0001

CDC. (2025, January 31). CDC datasets uploaded before January 28th, 2025. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/20250128-cdc-datasets

data.cdc.gov full archive: R/DataHoarder. (n.d.). Reddit. Retrieved 29 April 2025, from https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1ife9p1/datacdcgov_full_archive/

Exec. Order No. 14168, 90 FR 8615 (2025). https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/

Faust, J. (2025a, February 1). BREAKING NEWS: CDC orders mass retraction and revision of submitted research across all science and medicine journals. Banned terms must be scrubbed. [Substack newsletter]. Inside Medicine. https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-news-cdc-orders-mass-retraction

Faust, J. (2025b, September 20). BREAKING NEWS: Censorship returns to the CDC. At least 22 websites are down. [Substack newsletter]. Inside Medicine. https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-news-censorship-returns

Faust, J. (2025c, November 3). Exclusive: The Trump administration dismantled the CDC’s peer review system. Staffers scrambled to salvage it. [Substack newsletter]. Inside Medicine. https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/exclusive-the-trump-administration?utm_medium=reader2

Gaba, C. (2025a, February 2). Links to archived versions of every CDC.gov page available pre-purge (Part 1 of 15) [Text]. ACA Signups. https://acasignups.net/25/02/07/links-archived-versions-every-cdcgov-page-available-pre-purge-part-1-15

Gaba, C. (2025b, February 6). CDC.Gov Archive Index [Text]. ACA Signups. https://acasignups.net/cdc-website

Internet Archive. (n.d.). About the Internet Archive. Retrieved 29 April 2025, from https://archive.org/about/

Nielsen, K. H., & Sørensen, M. P. (2017). How to take non-knowledge seriously, or “the unexpected virtue of ignorance”. Public Understanding of Science, 26(3), 385–392. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662515600967

Rasmussen, A. (2025, February 3). Page 10. Just a few more pages to go. CDC’s website was big. Acasignups.net/25/02/03/lin… [Post]. Bluesky. https://bsky.app/profile/angierasmussen.bsky.social/post/3lhcbwnyd6c24

Restored CDC. (n.d.). Our Mission. Retrieved 7 December 2025, from https://aboutus.restoredcdc.org/

Stone, W. (2025, February 11). Judge orders restoration of federal health websites. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/02/11/nx-s1-5293387/judge-orders-cdc-fda-hhs-websites-restored

Thompson, E. (2025, February 13). Canadian residents are racing to save the data in Trump’s crosshairs. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-us-medical-environmental-data-1.7457627

Valenti, J. (2025, February 1). Download CDC Guidelines Removed By The Trump Admin [Substack newsletter]. Abortion, Every Day. https://jessica.substack.com/p/cdc-birth-control-guidelines-pdf

Winner, L. (1980). Do Artifacts Have Politics? Daedalus, 109(1), 121–136.

Hannah Schmalstich is a master’s student at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Vienna. She is also a research assistant for the European Research Council-funded project FutureSpace. She received her bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences from Durham University in 2024, focusing on physics and philosophy and completing an undergraduate dissertation analysing the social and political contexts surrounding the Oppenheimer security clearance hearing. She is primarily interested in infrastructures and governance in the context of commercial satellite constellations, with the aim to integrate political theory and visual STS in understanding Earth-level user interactions with space infrastructure.

STS in the Woods

STS Vienna

by Sarah Davies

STS department staff marked the start of the new semester with an informal retreat in the vineyards around Vienna. The afternoon of 29th September saw staff members brave some spots of rain and the surprisingly steep hills around Nußdorf for a hike along the Donau, through vineyards and woods, and into Grinzing, where we closed the walk with refreshments at Feuerwehr Wagner. The event offered the possibility for staff across the department to catch up after the summer, and marks the start of a new tradition: we will reconvene next year on 30th September 2026.

The photos show those who braved the hike, and the route we took – in case anyone wants to recreate it.

Figure 1: The Brave Souls Who Finished the Hike (© Sarah Davies)
Figure 2: The Route Taken – For Other Brave Souls Who Want to Recreate the Hike

E-Participation in Governance – should democracies want (more of) it?

STS Vienna

by Alexander Pölz

Forms of direct democracy have been on the rise in the last two decades. One particularly interesting example is Moscow, where the municipal government implemented forms of e-participation in their governance by letting the public vote on specific issues, like urban development planning and transport (Schlaufer 2021: 824). After registering via phone number, citizens can vote on the platform Active Citizen (the proposed English translation for Aktivnyi Grazhdanin) in multiple-choice referenda and are even rewarded points for participating (Lunevich 2019: 86).

Figure 1: The Moscow Skyline at Night (Credit: Pixabay)

This platform caught my eye, as, to my knowledge, there are no similar widely used forms of online participation in Austria that would match this level of influence on governance. While I was initially excited to learn more about possibilities of giving the public a say in local politics, the article claims that the municipal government in Moscow implements participatory elements without challenging “the distribution of decision-making power” (Schlaufer 2021: 821), which still lies solely in the hand of the local authorities, as (among other things) all the choices are pre-defined by governmental actors. This made me question the need to establish such a form of participation in the first place, leading to the broader question: Is online participation something democracies should be striving for, something from which democracies could benefit?

In this short post, I want to first highlight some aspects Schlaufer (2021) mentions that would make the purpose of such a technology questionable, whereafter I shortly express theoretical considerations on how to meaningfully implement online participation in a democratic and just way.

Online Participation on Active Citizen

Though the strategy of implementing direct forms of democracy appears to be in line with attempts of other governments, Active Citizen can be viewed as an extreme case in regards to legitimacy claims. Building up on the legitimacy model by Scharpf (1998), Schlaufer (2021: 822) distinguishes three interdependent types of legitimation: input-based, output-based and discourse-based. Whereas input-based legitimation is grounded in the accurate representation of citizens’ preferences, output-based legitimation takes the usefulness of a policy for the public as its primary marker. For the discourse-based legitimation, the creation of a “collective identity” and a “compelling narrative” (Schlaufer 2021: 826) is necessary.

On a very surface level, it sure seems like online participation would be inclusive: Citizens can more easily make their voice heard and partake in the making of policies. This allows people to play a role in (co-)creating the city/society they want to live in and thereby have an effective impact in local politics. Additionally, a study by Kim and Lee has shown that e-participation can (among other things) lead to a higher assessment of government transparency and higher levels of trust in the government that holds online elections on issues (2012: 825-826).

Counterintuitively, the policies that people get to vote on on the Moscovian platform Active Citizen actually do not make a big difference (Lunevich 2019, Gritsenko / Indukaev 2021, Schlaufer 2021). On the one hand, they have been selected by the government beforehand, meaning that only those alternatives, that the local government would already agree on, are even eligible for being selected (Schlaufer 2021: 823-824), which helps the government maintain and increase control over policy domains (Gritsenko / Indukaev 2021: 1111) and can be seen as a form of censorship. For instance, Moscow citizens could elect the hill on which a monument for ‘Vladimir the Great’ could be erected, but not whether it should be erected or not (Lunevich 2019: 88). Many of the issues people get to vote on have also been described as “inconsequential” (Gritsenko / Indukaev 2021: 1122), as some of the policies are basically set in stone or are only symbolic (like the re-naming of streets) which puts the value of such a form of participation into question. By appearing more democratic in this specifically technological way, many young people (who commonly show lower turnout numbers in traditional forms of elections) are engaged on Active Citizen. While some feel more involved in the making of urban planning, others do express concerns about not voting on relevant issues (Lunevich 2019: 89).

Another aspect is the question of who is even eligible and able to vote on such platforms. While local authorities claim that 2.2 million users are registered on Active Citizen, it requires both technological knowledge to participate and people need to constantly be aware of upcoming issues, which in turn requires time and resources some people might not be able to expend (this relates to arguments of delegating power to politicians, commonly brought forth against forms of direct democracy).

Figure 2: Screenshot of the User Surface of Active Citizen, © Active Citizen, taken from Bloomberg

Thus, in the case of Active Citizen, the three legitimation strategies identified by Schlaufer appear to only play mostly a surface-level role: On the one hand, the platform has been described as a “public opinion survey tool” (Schlaufer 2021: 830). Because of the way it is implemented, the platform does not challenge the decision-making power, while pretending to do so. On the other, as the platform can produce numbers that show responsiveness to the citizen’s desires, the municipal government can portray “success stories of improved urban policy performance” (Schlaufer 2021: 831), thereby simulating an increase in output-based legitimation. In terms of discourse-based legitimation, Active Citizen can be considered part of a modernization attempt by local authorities, with which the government without much success tries to appear digitized and responsive (Schlaufer 2021: 831).

How to implement it fairly

While it seems to me that Active Citizen does not live up to the promises of more participation, it does indirectly tell us what such participation could look like. The following list provides some considerations of what a fair implementation might include:

  • Regarding the question of participation, it should be noted that while it is encouraging to hear that young people seem to be interested to engage in this newer form of governance, online voting does require technology (smartphones / laptops, internet, and the knowledge to operate these) to function, excluding certain groups, like non tech-savvy people, areas lacking the technological infrastructure, or citizens who are simply not interested in using digital technologies in this way. If, as the result of a broad societal dialogue, a community considers e-participation beneficial and such technologies were planned to be implemented on a bigger scale, these issues would also have to be addressed (for example, one might consider organizing info events for people lacking the necessary technological knowledge; or holding complementary in-person referenda in local community centres).
  • The public should also have a reasonable chance to propose legislation that goes beyond what is already planned by the authorities, thereby enabling citizen input (Schlaufer 2021: 822), so that the “interaction between citizens / civil society and the authorities is horizontal and multidirectional rather than one-directional from the top down” (Linde / Karlsson 2013: 279). This might even go beyond submitting additional answers: One might also consider it desirable to have referenda on proposals from nongovernmental actors.
  • Citizens should also have a say in the design of the system, as it would increase the democratic value of the whole process if they had a chance to contribute on multiple levels (e.g. in regards to inclusivity / accessibility).
  • All this builds on the assumption that e-participation is generally something desirable, which is not necessarily the case. Hence, the conditions and the modes under which e-participation should be introduced need to be a topic of participatory debate themselves.

To sum up, there certainly is potential in direct forms of democracy, like e-participation on local issues; but the Moscovian case highlights several limitations of such participation, and while some might consider these constraints to be especially pronounced in electoral autocracies or non-democratic countries (Linde / Karlsson 2013, Kneuer / Harnisch 2016), they reveal potential shortcomings of the democratic value of forms of direct democracy more broadly, as they might also translate to (for example) liberal democracies and supranational entities, like the EU. So to be a technology worth implementing, e-participation should aim to be more than a legitimacy-cover for governments / supranational entities and for policies that are already decided.

Alexander Pölz is a master’s student in Epistemologies of Science and Technology at the University of Vienna, with a background in political science, Scandinavian studies and philosophy. His work explores political epistemology, non-human agency, and ethical implications of technology. In his spare time, he is a film enthusiast and passionate trading card gamer.

References

Gritsenko, Daria / Indukaev, Andrey (2021): “Digitalising City Governance in Russia: The Case of the ‘Active Citizen’ Platform”, in: Europe-Asia Studies 73(6), 1102-1124.

Kim, Soonhee / Lee, Jooho (2012): “E-participation, transparency, and trust in local government”, in: Public Administration Review 72(6), 819-828.

Kneuer, Marianne / Harnisch, Sebastian (2016): “Diffusion of e-government and e-participation in Democracies and Autocracies”, in: Global Policy 7(4), 548-556.

Linde, Jonas / Karlsson, Martin (2013): “The Dictator’s New Clothes: The Relationship Between E-Participation and Quality of Government in Non-Democratic Regimes”, in: International Journal of Public Administration 36, 269-281.

Lunevich, Iryna (2019): “(Dis) Empowering Technologies? Social Construction of Electronic Participation Tools”, in: Perekrestki 1, 79-100.

Scharpf, Fritz W. (1998): “Interdependence and democratic legitimation”, in: MPIfG Working Paper 98(2).

Schlaufer, Caroline (2021): „Why do nondemocratic regimes promote e-participation? The case of Moscow’s active citizen online voting platform”, in: Governance 34, 821-836.

No Research in a Muted Country – On Academic Neutrality and Survival Science in Georgia

STS Vienna

by Ina Kaplanishvili

“My student has been arrested“- a sentence often repeated among Georgian lecturers today.

I first learned about Max Weber’s principle of neutrality, the necessity of demarcating “is“ from “ought“, science from politics, during my bachelor studies. At that early stage, I accepted that idea almost uncritically.

Later, I encountered Hannah Arendt’s work. I still remember a warning from my former lecturer: as researchers, we must remain attentive to the emergence of totalitarian regimes, driven by various political actors seeking power – often at unexpected times. Arendt (2017) reminds us that it’s often the “neutral“ masses – the so-called “silent majority“ who enable such regimes. So, while I continued to respect Max Weber’s principles of scientific ethos, the ongoing protest movement in Georgia, started in 2024, shook my remaining commitment to Weberian neutrality. The first wave of protests erupted after the “foreign agent law[1]” targeted NGOs and independent media. A second wave followed when the government delayed EU integration until 2028, a move seen as deepening ties with Russia, which occupies 20% of Georgian territory. Together, these sparked one of the largest protest movements in Georgia’s post-Soviet history. In this context, Arendt’s influence transformed neutrality from a respectable idea into something deeply problematic. Political attentiveness has since become part of my moral compass as a future researcher. This led me to ask whether it’s ethical, or even possible, to keep science and politics strictly separate today.

Picture 1:“Let’s take freedom into our own hands” – a protest banner on the fence of TSU’s main building. November 18, 2024. View the original photo on Radio Tavisupleba’s website. Photo © RFE/RL, by Gela Bochikashvili.

More importantly, I argue that it’s no longer just a personal choice for scientists to remain neutral. While science and politics have always been interwoven, in Georgia, this entanglement has become particularly visible, as politics -by the same old means- has directly entered academic spaces. At dawn on November 19, 2024, during a student protest at Tbilisi State University (TSU), the government deployed police forces onto campus to suppress the demonstrations. This was not metaphorical but physical invasion. When police walk into university lecture halls, academia enters what Kastenhofer (2024) calls a “survival mode” in which scientists become visibly activists and citizens and public intellectuals work not only to produce new knowledge, but to preserve the very space where knowledge can be made.

In Georgia, this is not only triggered by physical force but deepened by censorship and new legal restrictions that reshape what can be taught, discussed or funded in academia. In such moments, speaking out is not radical, it is vital. As Thierry et al. (2023) warned, there is “no research on a dead planet.” But what about a silenced university? A banned curriculum? A generation of students told not to ask certain questions? In my context, the warning is clear: without space for critical and independent inquiry, the kind of research necessary to challenge power and prevent authoritarianism becomes muted.

In response to police at university and ongoing protest suppression, many lecturers, professors at TSU’s Faculty of Social and Political Sciences issued a strong public statement, condemning the “brutal suppression of peaceful civil protests by law enforcement agencies” during which numerous journalists, ordinary citizens, students “injured through the use of disproportionate, and deliberate, force.”

Moreover, there was an institutional form of political interference. On September 17, 2024, the Georgian Parliament passed the Law on Family Values and the Protection of Minors. The government claims it protects “traditional” family structures, but in practice, it restricts the rights and visibility of sexual minorities. Its effects include educational institutions. Under the new law, not only schools but also universities are banned from “promoting“ or even discussing content that includes gender identities differing from biological sex or same-sex relationships.

In this case, politics did not arrive with batons, but with curriculum guidelines. Gender studies, queer theory and discussions of identity are now labeled as “propaganda.” As Teona Mataradze, a prominent sociologist and gender studies scholar, put it in an interview with Media Platform 64, “The MA program in Gender Studies at TSU, the first in the South Caucasus, loses its meaning under this law.”

So, instead of asking whether Georgian lecturers, most of whom are also active researchers, have the luxury of Weberian neutrality, we should ask what “neutrality” even means and does under these circumstances. Does “neutrality” mean to stay silent when policy dictates what we can teach and research? When funding is revoked for certain “banned” topics? As STS scholars have long argued, boundaries between academic inquiry and state power are often illusions; science and society are always entangled. In Georgia, these limits haven’t just blurred; they’ve been openly violated, pushing scholars into survival mode.

As Kastenhofer (2024) argues, we are now witnessing the rise of a “survival science”- a science that acknowledges the collapse of old rules due to societal changes and crises – climate emergency, threats to liberal democracies, growing inequality – that fundamentally change academic expectations, self-understanding and ethos, and force us to ask the question: “What are, and what should be, our new norms for science in society?” (p. 344). This includes, as Kastenhofer notes, “radical interventions“ like “scientists going on strike and taking to the streets” (p. 347).

That’s why, when Georgian researchers in the social and political sciences marched, spoke out and defended their students and academic values, I did not see these actions as unexpected or extreme – but as “radical interventions” that I understand not as political, but as academic acts carried out in survival mode, triggered by crises: threats to freedom of speech, the autonomy of academia and the presence of police forces at university. In Georgia too, academics have been forced to go further and ask a question that lies at the heart of survival science: what should science become when the basic conditions for doing science are under threat? I believe that in Georgia (as in the world), academics are in the process of creating the new moral and practical compass to guide them through survival – meaning a world full of uncertainty and societal crises. Seeing academics march and protest, lecturers speaking through microphones, and university classes held in the streets gives me the courage to say that this transformation – the creation of a new ethos – has already begun in Georgia.

And lastly, though this essay focuses on Georgia, the issue is borderless. In both non-democratic and democratic countries- even in the USA- academic freedom is increasingly at risk.

Ina Kaplanishvili is a Georgian master’s student in Science and Technology Studies at the University of Vienna, with a background in sociology from the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA). Her current research interests include digital practices and technologies as actors in civic and protest engagement.

Bibliography

Arendt, H. (2017). The origins of totalitarianism. Penguin Classics.

Kastenhofer, K. (2024). From a normal and a post-normal science ethos towards a survival science ethos? GAIA – Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, 33(4), 344-350. https://doi.org/10.14512/gaia.33.4.4

Thierry, A., Horn, L., von Hellermann, P., & Gardner, C. J. (2023). “No research on a dead planet”: Preserving the socio-ecological conditions for academia. Frontiers in Education, 8, Article 1237076. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1237076

[1] The document of „Law of Georgia on transparency of foreign influence“ (In English)

Dire wolves, Dire Consequences? De-extinction and technological solutionism

STS Vienna

by Michal Nodzynski

When I was a kid, I was fascinated with dinosaurs and other examples of prehistoric fauna that have been long extinct. I often wondered how it would be to live among those species and interact with them.

And in a turn of events that would excite 10 year old me (and terrifies 30-year-old me), an American biotech company called Colossal Biosciences, announced on April 7th that it managed to ‘de-extinct’ Dire wolves through 3 puppies named Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi.

Dire wolves were ancient species of animals, believed to be related to gray wolves, that went extinct around 10,000 –13,000 years ago. In their prime, they were believed to inhabit a wide range of environments, from Canada in North America all the way down to Bolivia in South America.

The company managed to achieve this ‘de-extinction’ by editing 14 genes within the gray wolf genome to affect the phenotype (how the organism looks) of the wolves to resemble that of a dire wolf.

Promotional picture of the two gray wolf pups that the company genetically
modified to resemble dire wolves. Colossal Biosciences.

Now there has been already a serious discussion on whether the 3 puppies can be considered resurrected dire wolves or are just genetically modified gray wolves. It doesn’t help that there has been serious doubt whether modern gray wolves are actually the closest relatives of this extinct species. And on top of that, there are longstanding ethical issues connected with the practice of genetically modifying animals.

When it comes to ‘why?’ of ‘de-extinction, the leadership of the company points towards helping conservation efforts, increased biodiversity as well as potential way to combat climate change using de-extinct animals like mammoths to stop release of methane gas from thawing permafrost in the Arctic. This last theory is however not universally accepted by all researchers. For what it’s worth, George Church, geneticist and co-founder of Colossal Biosciences, compares such endeavours to “de-extinct” mammoths to “existing, rewilding projects” and seems not to be too concerned with potential implications of such “re-introduction”. This ‘downplaying’ of potential consequences could be beneficial for the public image of the company, and as such help with securing funding from private investors.

George R.R. Martin, author of ‘Game of Thrones’ fantasy book series,
holding one of the ‘dire wolf’ pups. The author was supposedly involved
in the process of de-extinction, and is even featured as one of the co-authors
of the pre-print paper that the company released on the preprint server bioRxiv.org.
George R. R. Martin

However, regardless of the validity of the claims about benefits of ‘de-extinction’ and soundness of scientific claims behind it, for me there is another angle that is worth exploring – the ‘techno-solutionist’ aspects of it.

Techno-solutionism is a term popularized by Evgeny Morozov in his book “To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism” (Morozov, 2013). The term is used there to describe the tendency of tech companies to look for digital solutions to different kinds of issues that contemporary societies deal with. Another term sometimes used interchangeably is ‘techno-fix’.

Whether it’s techno-solution or techno-fix, what I find interesting is the idea itself, that most societal problems could (and should) be addressed through the use of technology and innovation. The concept of ‘de-extinction’ very much embraces this way of thinking. Proponents of ‘de-extinction’ (such as George Church) emphasize that because issues, such as climate change, are so overwhelming and pressing, it justifies those unconventional approaches.

But techno-solutions often ignore that there exist well-researched and established ways of solving those issues. It’s just that often those solutions are not as ‘easy’ or as ‘quick’ as techno-solutionists would like them to be. Conservation efforts can be complicated, and they yield both successes and failures. But because they typically advocate restraint and harm reduction, they can be seen as ‘unattractive’ to those that prefer more decisive actions.

It’s also worth noting that conservational work is not universally opposed to use of modern technology. Frequently, conservational efforts take advantage of tools like tagging, drones or GPS data. Of course, even those technologies are not used uncritically. For example, the drones can be quite loud, and their deployment is only considered in cases where alternative, in-person intervention would be considered more disruptive to the environment.

And even so, those established technologies are sparsely used in the field. Researchers often highlight additional costs as well as poor adaptation of the equipment to the outdoor environment as one of the barriers to adapting technological tools in their work. In the end, the main issue in conservation isn’t lack of new technologies but lack of funding and interest from prominent stakeholders.

But what’s striking about those technologies in comparison to techno-fixes is what role they play in the process. Drones, satellites, and tags are there to support and enhance existing conservational frameworks. The work and research benefits from usage of those technologies, but does not depend entirely on them. The work could be done (albeit with more difficulty) without them. And in the end, the decision whether to use them or not is left to researchers and workers conducting those efforts.

On the other hand, techno-solutions often attempt to ‘disrupt’ established fields and completely change how issues are perceived and approached. And while this approach might work relatively well in markets focused on individual consumers[1] (such as consumer electronics or software) the consequences of failed ‘disruption’ in an environment-related field would be long-lasting and catastrophic.

The issue with techno-solutionist approach is that it not only ignores existing, non-technical, solutions, but it can even undermine them. Funding for conservation is already scarce and unevenly distributed. As such, some researchers worry that reallocating funds from undergoing conservation efforts towards de-extinction is simply not the most cost-efficient way to increase biodiversity.

Techno-solutions present a ‘quick’ technological fix that can appear to solve the problem without the need for deeper, structural changes, which more traditional approaches would call for. And when policymakers are both running out of time and money, techno-fixes can appear quite compelling.

It’s because of that need for urgency that techno-solutions are often proposed once ‘the issue’ reaches some sort of crisis. And this urgency can be then used as a way to legitimize those ‘fixes’ that otherwise would not be considered as a viable solution. For climate change, only now when the effects of it are obvious to everyone, are proponents of technologies such as Carbon Capture or Geoengineering becoming more bold and vocal about using them to address climate change.

Similar narratives can also be seen with ‘de-extinction’ movement. As conservation efforts become more difficult due to shifting political environments around the world, quick techno-fixes like ‘de-extinction’ can become more enticing to agencies and governments. In many ways, the tune changed from ‘there is no problem’ to ‘there is a problem, and we can only fix it now using technology’. This sense of urgency is a crucial element of techno-solutionisms, as it often allows it to bypass the usual assessment and public discussion that more established approaches require.

Technology might not be the solution, but it can definitely be part of it. But to do so, it has to work with people actively involved in conservational efforts and help them with addressing issues that they want to focus on. It also has to respect the voices and opinions of those that might be affected by deployment of said technologies. Conservational efforts to increase biodiversity shouldn’t have the same approach towards technology that in many cases caused the loss of said biodiversity.

It’s also worth highlighting that despite techno-solutionists claims that regulatory interventions don’t work – we have done that in the past. Remember the ozone layer hole? It’s still there, but studies have shown that since international efforts to reduce emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) the ozone hole actually is slowly shrinking. This shows that coordinated, international regulatory efforts (which still include technological innovation) can work.

What personally scares me about techno-solutionist approach to conservational efforts is the potential for complete disregard for the well-being of currently living animals and their habitats. If we can ‘3D-print’ lions, why care about dying, sickly lions that currently roam the Earth? Let them die, and then we can just make more! It often seems easier to scrap everything and start from nothing rather than maintain what we might perceive as ‘flawed’ environment. We already see this type of thinking in politics when certain politicians call for heavy ‘budget cuts’ insisting on removing certain programs and funding with total disregard for how such cuts would affect people who rely on those funds. This might seem like a very pessimist view of de-extinction movement, but we’ve been similarly careless in the past with technologies of plastic, radioactive elements, nuclear waste. Techno-fixes of the past frequently ended up being equivalent of hiding the dirt under the rug and calling it ‘future-me’ problem. Except the future-us are the future generations that end up paying the price for our shortsightedness.

And honestly, Colossal Sciences shouldn’t try to impress 10-year-old me. If for no other reason, than simply because he was terrified of wolves.

Michal Nodzynski is a masters’ student at the Science and Technology Studies department of the University of Vienna. With background in molecular biology, his interests include how research in Life Sciences are conducted and communicated, with focus on perceptions of failures in research. Outside of academia, Michal is a huge nerd who enjoys fantasy novels and Tabletop Role-playing Games.

[1] Unfortunately, Colossal Biosciences approach to de-extinction seems to be close to Silicon Valley ethos of ‘move fast and break things’. Despite employing researchers, the company doesn’t publish their results in peer-reviewed journals and announces their results through press releases and photoshoots. There are very few instances where a company actually backs-up their claims with actual research (one rare example of that is the aforementioned 2025 preprint). Typical of techno-solutionism, the company promises quick and impressive results but is unable to explain how it plans to achieve them or even document what it has done so far. Not to mention addressing potential consequences of their interventions.

Can a Cloud Catch Fire?

STS Vienna

by Carsten Horn

On the morning of 10 March of 2021, players of the online chess application Lichess, visitors to the website of the Centre Georges-Pompidou in Paris, the organizers of the Paris fashion week, a group of cybercriminals and a number of businesses were in for an unpleasant surprise. Data that they had thought to be safely stored in “the cloud” was gone! The reason: Around midnight, one of the four data centers operated by the market-leading French telecommunication and internet provider OVHcloud in Strasbourg, close to the German border on the river Rhine, had gone up in flames and another one had been severely damaged. The fire destroyed the servers which constitute the main infrastructure for part of the internet in the French internet domain and host the data of the data centers’ clients. More than two years later, despite the – typical – secrecy of the data center industry, information about the fire and the efforts to extinguish it were published. The fire had started in a power supply room and quickly spread throughout the five-storey building, leading to the devastating outcome.

In most cases, the fire probably had no long-lasting repercussions. The data stored in data centers is typically mirrored in multiple locations, leading to what Alexander R.E. Taylor (2018) calls an “infrastructural excess”. In my fieldwork, I learned for example that the streaming provider Netflix has its entire library mirrored in almost all co-location data centers worldwide. Yet, I cannot help but take the fire as an opportunity to think about what this event can teach us about our contemporary digital societies.  “Event” takes on a quite specific, and deeply philosophical meaning here. The event, as Mike Michael and Maja Horst (2011, p. 286) understand it, “is characterised by the fact that the interactions of it its constitutive elements change those elements”. In other words, in an event all actors that are part of it are transformed, they become otherwise.

Photograph of the OVH data centre on fire (Image: Xavier Garreau)

From a Burning Data Centers to Fire Objects

What are these transformations and how can we make sense of them? There is by now an emerging field of scholars in STS that engages with flammable objects, such as batteries. In a world that is getting increasingly hotter and is increasingly using highly-flammable objects, these scholars argue, we must come to terms with such fires. This would be a fitting approach; the Strasbourg fire shows that data centres are yet another highly-flammable object. That is why so much effort is spent on constructing fire extinguishing systems that put out fires but do not damage the servers and, consequently, the data stored on them (typically such systems thus use gas instead of water). But this is not what I’m after. At the cost of being too ironic and making use of what one could call a form of conceptual serendipity, I suggest we can think about the actual fire in Strasbourg in the spring of 2021 through the metaphor of the “fire object” coined by John Law and Vicky Singleton (2005) in a study on alcoholic liver disease (ALD). In this study, Law and Singleton find that none of the previous notions of what an object is can help them to think about the dynamics of their object of research. It is not as stable, or rather, as stabilized as the quasi-objects of Actor-Network Theory (ANT). But neither is it as neatly and continuously changing as the “fluid object” in the famous case of the Zimbabwe Bush Pump.

By contrast, ALD is a relational object in multiple versions that are juxtaposed and interrelated at the same time. That is, each version is part of a present reality that co-exists with the absent realities of other versions of alcoholic liver disease. The authors call this a “fire object” because they liken it to the flames of a fire. These flames that we may observe in the present are likewise related to the absent presences of fuel and ashes. Unlike the fluid object where we can observe a somewhat continuous flow of the same reality of the object, even where it transforms, the transitions between the different realities of the fire object are discontinuous. They “jump” (Law & Singleton, 2005), p. 347) and, with the flip of a switch, a present reality is transformed into an absent present reality and makes way for another present reality.

Lessons from the Fire at the Strasbourg Data Center

What I suggest is that the event, that transpired in the night from 9 to 10 March on the banks of the River Rhine in Strasbourg, helps us to understand that “the cloud” is a fire object in a way akin to how Law and Singleton theorize ALD. The actual fire at the data center marks precisely the moment when the metaphorical fire object and its reality abruptly and brutally shift. This is, I suggest, more than a typical case of infrastructural breakdown. For STSers, infrastructural breakdown occupies a privileged epistemological position because it is here that we see the work that infrastructure(s) invisibly do. This is why infrastructure scholars speak of breakdown as a form of “infrastructural inversion” (Star & Ruhleder, 1996). The fire at OVHcloud is more than just infrastructural breakdown because the very reality of the cloud, the fire object, changed with the fire. For users, the cloud overnight transformed from an ethereal domain into a very real building at the outskirts of the capital of Alsace in France.

I want to dwell on three aspects of the new reality that emerged in the event of the fire because I believe it can tell us something about contemporary digital societies and the possibilities for them to be otherwise.

1. We are not really used to thinking about our data. It is just there – after all, this is the etymological root of the term itself (from Latin datum, given). This is what the cloud is for, right?! We use it to safely store our data, never to worry about it again because it is just there (Brennan, 2016). Digital technologies and infrastructures have made it possible to store everything at a click and without thinking twice. This has changed how we archive things. Our ‘archives’ have become “dumpsters” (Hogan, 2015) just because they have become technically so easy to produce at little to no (financial) cost.

The fire at OHVcloud changes this. It suddenly creates a chance for a more conscious relation with our data. Data is not just given and will always be there when we need it. If you were playing chess on Lichess in March of 2021, there is a real possibility that your progress was lost – quite literally – in the flames. Can the fire thus perhaps be the start of a new form of data and data infrastructure literacy where we consider more consciously what we store and where we store it?

2. Relatedly, the reality of “the cloud” itself changes. Consider, this insight from an article titled “Europe’s data treasure burns on the Rhine” from the German news outlet Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ): “[O]f course, the cloud is just a metaphor”.  As scholars of science and technology know all too well, language is performative, metaphors do work. In this case, they render invisible what it actually means to store data “in the cloud”. It surely does not mean that we transfer our “data treasure” to some kind of ephemeral and immaterial realm. This is why the argument that when we speak of “the cloud” we actually mean a global, very material network of digital infrastructures is well-rehearsed in the literature on data centers. Jennifer Holt and Patrick Vonderau (2015, p. 75), for instance, want to study data centers as the places “where ‘the cloud’ touches the ground” and as “the physical presence of this imaginary space”. The fire at OHVcloud might have achieved this. It has, at least for a short moment in time, generated a reality in which the material ingredients of ‘the cloud’ are visible. Beyond the methodological commonplace that infrastructure (only) becomes visible upon breakdown, this may be the point of departure for political debates around data centers. To quote again from the above-mentioned article in the FAZ: “The accident shows that there urgently needs to be a public discussion about where, by whom, under what conditions and how securely our data is stored”. I would add that this public discussion must not neglect the massive environmental costs data centers have due to their energy and water consumption, the raw materials necessary to construct the servers they house and the ruins and e-waste they leave behind.

3. There is a final lesson we can draw from the data center fire (object). It points us to the new fragilities of the digital age. In an article published by Vice News on the day of the fire, Lorenzo Fraceschi-Bicchierai remarks that the fire “shows how things we often think of as ‘cyber’ have a very real physical infrastructure that can be attacked, impacted by disasters, or otherwise messed with”. This insight follows from what I have written above. If “the cloud” is not ethereal but very material and on the ground, it is at risk of whatever kind of catastrophe we can imagine, for example, a fire. It is not for nothing that, as I have learned in my fieldwork, that data centres in Vienna are not built in the approach path of the airport, as the however-improbable risk that a plane crash may destroy our valuable data is too large. What does this fragility entail? Irish poet Jessica Traynor writes that data centers have become our “memory machines”. Our collective memory is now stored digitally and, hence, at risk of our new digital fragilities. Traynor puts it succinctly: “Rather than creating something permanent and inviolable, we’ve made our memories more contingent than ever upon a fantasy of technological stability that, given the constant churn of history, seems inevitably fleeting.” Lo and behold, this also concerns the data that keeps our administrations going, that pertains us as citizens. OVHcloud also housed French government data. Some businesses lost parts of their data forever – as illustrated by lawsuits against OVHVcloud. So, given the ever-growing dependency on digital technologies and growing geopolitical tensions, what risks are we willing to take, what fragilities are we willing to bear, when it comes to our cultural memories?

The story I tell about the fire at OHVcloud could easily be one repair and maintenance (Denis, Mongili & Pontille, 2016). After firefighters had extinguished the flames, the damages could be assessed, servers could be replaced, and operations could continue – almost seamlessly. In this story, the fire would have been but a noise in the system. The event would have been tamed before it would have become durable. We would have easily gone back to the old reality, perhaps before even noticing a reality shift. Indeed, the architecture of digital infrastructures and labor inside data centers aim to prevent downtime at all costs. Failure and breakdown thus lose their epistemological significance because they are so easily glossed over (Taylor, 2021).

The notion of the “fire object” makes us aware that the reality that would thus have been restored has lost its innocence. It is haunted by the spectre of the absent presence of the alter-reality the fire brought about. “Fire object” entices us to look for the absent presence of this alter-reality, of which the (metaphorical) ashes of the fire in Strasbourg serve as a reminder; of a glimpse we caught in the days following 10 March, 2021. It also points us to the difficulties of bringing the multiple realities we live in together. For instance, there has been a long investigation of the causes of the fire and, as I mentioned above, several lawsuits as clients have sued the company for the data loss (in the absence of backup-storage policies). Ultimately, the notion of the “fire object” calls upon us to keep the event open. A cloud can catch fire. If and when it does, it presents an opportunity to become more aware of the (environmental) fragilities of digital societies and to make digital infrastructures more democratic and sustainable.

Carsten Horn is a doctoral candidate in the ERC-funded research project “Innovation Residues. Modes and Infrastructures of Caring for our Longue-durée Environmental Futures” at  the STS Department. He investigates the residues of digital practices, digitalization and datafication at the interface of digital and environmental concerns. In his dissertation project “Datafication and its Discontents”, Carsten studies the emerging controversies around data centers in Austria, France and Ireland.

References

Brennan, S. (2016). Making Data Sustainable: Backup Culture and Risk Perception. In N. Starosielski & J. Walker (Eds.), Sustainable Media (pp. 56–76). Routledge.

Denis, J., Mongili, A., & Pontille, D. (2016). Maintenance & Repair in Science and Technology Studies. TECNOSCIENZA: Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies, 6(2), Article 2.

Hogan, M. (2015). The Archive as Dumpster. Pivot: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies and Thought, 4(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.25071/2369-7326.39565

Holt, J., & Vonderau, P. (2015). “Where the Internet Lives”. Data Centers as Cloud Infrastructures. In L. Parks & N. Starosielski (Eds.), Signal Traffic. Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures (pp. 71–93). University of Illinois Press.

Horst, M., & Michael, M. (2011). On the Shoulders of Idiots: Re-thinking Science Communication as ‘Event.’ Science as Culture, 20(3), 283–306. https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2010.524199

Law, J., & Singleton, V. (2005). Object Lessons. Organization, 12(3), 331–355. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508405051270

Star, S. L., & Ruhleder, K. (1996). Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces. Information Systems Research, 7(1), 111–134.

Taylor, A. R. E. (2018, May 19). Failover Architectures: The Infrastructural Excess of the Data Centre Industry. Failed Architecture. https://failedarchitecture.com/failover-architectures-the-infrastructural-excess-of-the-data-centre-industry/

Taylor, A. R. E. (2021). Standing by for data loss: Failure, preparedness and the cloud. Ephemera: Theory & Politcs in Organization, 21(1), 59–93.