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- Convenors:
-
Riccardo De Cristano
(University of bologna)
Alexander Paulsson (Lund University)
Marc Brightman (Università di Bologna)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 7 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Technology is seen as a neutral process by progressives and conservatives, its advancement is praised as the key to solving any issues. However, the fourth industrial revolution is coupled with unmatched inequalities: this session aims to analyze how emerging technologies can produce injustices.
Long Abstract:
In 2021, non-fungible tokens and touristic space travel made it to the front pages, while billions of dollars poured into high-speed infrastructures and luxury facilities. High-fashion and technology stocks outperformed the market, while inequalities kept growing.
Current society appears to be dominated by the exclusiveness' paradigm. Most people are excluded from political and economical resources. High-net-worth individuals' exclusive lifestyles make them stand apart from the rest of the 99%. If the role played by financial markets and conspicuous consumption patterns in shaping and maintaining inequalities has been thoroughly investigated earlier, fewer words have been spent on the role of technology itself.
With the emergence of new technologies, new forms of exclusions are set up. Non-fungible-tokens are "one-of-a-kind" assets in the digital world that can be bought and sold like any other piece of property while lacking a tangible form. NFTs rely on the digital uniqueness (exclusiveness) obtained through cryptography (excluding the third party from accessing messages). Space travels set billionaires physically apart from the world. International airports, high-speed trains are designed to connect urban elites, while excluding most territories. Technologies' own designs embed segregation, thus enforcing unequal relations among society because they were made by profit-hungry and/or rent-seeking corporations. Because of this 'exclusion by design', we invite critical studies of technology and its significance in producing and reproducing inequalities. We look for critical engagements with the abovementioned nexuses, through both theoretical analyses and case studies, showing how innovations have given Promethean emancipation for the few, and fetters for the many.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 7 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
MaaS is reshaping the transportation industry. It is a time of opportunity for ICT giants to redesign the system, but in the traditional taxi sector in Seoul, most stakeholders are suffering from unequal distribution of time value under the double torture of technological ignorance and exclusion.
Paper long abstract:
With the emergence of a set of new information and communications technologies promoted as Mobility as a Service(MaaS), the transportation industry all around the world is going through a period of great change. Various forms of public and private transport services, such as bus, taxi, bike, car rental and sharing, are becoming integrated into a single mobility service. Furthermore, a new level of technological design absorbs the digital features of provider, user, information, planning, booking and payment into a single interface with a mobile application at its heart.
It is a time of golden opportunity for leading national or global ICT giants to redesign the whole system. A few companies are virtually setting up innovation to expand the existing market, but in the real traditional taxi sector in Seoul, most stakeholders are suffering from unequal distribution of time value under the double torture of technological ignorance and exclusion. Although one of the oldest interest groups in the sector, Seoul Taxi Association, has organized a task force team to overcome the crisis and is trying to devise an alternative plan. It is somewhat late for the members of a group to not only be technologically smart for riding through a redesigned smart city but also be skillfully smart for picking up a new generation of passengers on newly designed smart interfaces.
To clarify what this timing issue of social inequality really is, I finally invent a new question as an urban anthropologist who majored in mechanical engineering. When is Seoul Taxi?
Paper short abstract:
The digital divide becomes a huge issue in education. It has both positive and negative impact to the learners. While virtual learning becomes an imperative, the present paper will analyze the problems that hamper effective learning.
Paper long abstract:
With emergence of new Technologies there is a paradigm shift in learning. As a result, virtual learning has become imperative since Pandemic ensued. Notwithstanding the Pandemic the digital divide is an ongoing problem in India owing to societal structural imbalances. Certainly the Pandemic has made it worse. Against this backdrop, a study was undertaken to understand the perspective of Learners in Higher education in the Indian context. The study suggest a grave exclusion among the Learners thereby hampering effective learning. Further, the study attempt to provide an alternative approach to bridge digital gap in learning.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how French Guiana became the official launch site for the European and French Space Agencies. It traces the transition from penal colony to launch site in less than two decades and demonstrates that space infrastructures are dependent on and reinforce inequal power structures.
Paper long abstract:
The longest land border of France is not within continental Europe; it is in South America. French Guiana, a French oversees region, shares a 730km border with Brazil. It is the only European Outermost Region that is not an island, but that is not the only thing that sets it apart. The region houses the official space port of both the French Space Agency (CNES) and European Space Agency (ESA), making it a key infrastructure for ESA’s mission to: ‘ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world’ (ESA, 2022). This paper explores how much the Guianan perspective is taken into account in these visions of the future for Europe through a literature review, archival research and media analysis. It traces the historical trajectory of the region from colony where the French government sent their convicts, to where they send their rockets to launch in less than two decades. The paper follows other scholars who centralise ‘the periphery’ of the space industry, like Australia (Gorman 2005), Brazil (Mitchell, 2017) and French Guiana itself (Redfield, 2000). The author explores how the concept of ‘outermost’ enabled the justifications for French Guiana becoming access point to ‘outer space’ as it is logistically well situated, classified as ‘remote’ and politically strategic. This paper is written in preparation for field work in French Guiana, commencing October 2022, for the Anthropological Research into Imaginations and Explorations of Space project at the Jagiellonian University.