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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:
- Wednesday 8 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 Wednesday 8 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
A great paradox of our era is that we build supercomputers to help us navigate the future, while suppressing the imaginative potential of millions of human brains through education systems promoting docility and fulfilling blueprints of the future designed by others.
Paper long abstract:
Reflecting on ethnographic fieldwork in schools in South Asia, Southern Africa and Europe, this paper argues that Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), one of the current mainstream paradigms of formal education, is often implemented in ways that create new forms of inequality. Because education under the banner of "sustainable development" is designed to aid society in addressing the environmental crisis through continued infinite economic growth and techno-utopian solutions, it undermines rather than bolsters young people's ability to imagine alternative futures and bring them into being. As a result, our education systems end up perpetuating ageism, where older generations design blueprints for the future and young generations are expected to merely execute them. The current blueprints of global neoliberal techno-capitalism are heavily skewed in the direction of technological solutions, from large-scale carbon capture to the colonisation of outer space, which leads to the exclusion of the imaginative potential of millions of young people. This is reflected also in the disproportionate focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects in many education systems. The paper will also demonstrate how this type of inequality is not uniform across the education system, with the world's "elite" schools catering to the global rich seeking to turn young people into the "leaders" who will play an active role in shaping the technological future, while the vast majority of often marginalised and underfunded schools (inadvertently) help turn young people into cogs of global techno-capitalism.
Paper short abstract:
This paper uses the experience of the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota to demonstrate how exclusive data access creates dependencies which multiply pre-existing power differentials in fast-moving development situations, especially for rural and Indigenous communities.
Paper long abstract:
In fast-moving extraction situations, rural and Indigenous communities can become overwhelmed without real-time access to data. They become information dependent on the very companies and states that are implementing the projects that then become irreversible. This paper looks at one example of this complex issue, the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota. It also discusses the search for a solution to the data exclusion and shows the promises and problems with various initiatives, from access to balloon mapping, supposedly accessible satellite imagery, and building an open access geographical data tool for the communities. Access to data is more complicated than simply providing avenues to the data. Political and economic pressures, academic and technical language, ethical concerns, and cultural values can all contribute to the exclusion of people from knowledge critical to their futures. While digital data tools, repositories, and databases theoretically democratize knowledge and therefore power, they can in practice create further power differentials through gatekeeping and in-built necessities for interpretation. Rural and Indigenous communities are often faced with imposed digital landscapes to which they lack access, yet which define their futures.
Paper short abstract:
While web3 narratives are based on a strong focus on democratisation, decentralisation, transparency and access, first interviews with web3 investors and entrepreneurs show a stark tension between their own goals and these narratives. How can what web3 calls thinking be squared?
Paper long abstract:
Proponents and practitioners of web3 argue that decentralized technologies have not only technological, but also broader social, economic, and even political benefits. Blockchain technologies in particular are not only seen to be more efficient (less based on humans), but democratise and enable access (e.g. to a currency), make transparent and secure (e.g. the decentralised organisation). To date, empirical research on the sociopolitical values embedded within decentralized technologies has focused on consumers (e.g. Cousins, Subramanian, & Esmaeilzadeh, 2019) or has sought to understand the perspective of companies via publicly available whitepapers (e.g. Inwood & Zappavigna, 2021) or public case studies (e.g. Hutten, 2018). In our qualitative research, we explore through repeat interviews the subjective perspectives of developers, entrepreneurs, and investors in blockchain-enabled companies on the technological and sociopolitical benefits and risks of these technologies. Paraphrasing Daub (2020), our research focuses on what web3 calls thinking - from values to ideologies of the key web3 investors and entrepreneurs.
What first exploratory data brings to the fore is in stark tension to the 'ideological narratives' underlying web3; instead of increased access, web3 investors are still mostly interested in 'blitzscaling unicorns' (fast scaling and fast exits). Similarly, web3 entrepreneurs and operators are as obsessed with reputation and scale as they might be with the 'democratisation narrative' at times. Underlying all of this is emerging empirical evidence that in fact blockchains are highly unequal: 0.1% of miners control 50% of capacity; 10,000 people hold a third of all cryptocurrency. How does thats square?
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the difference between digital and processing resources as sources of stratification in the VR Chat platform. They create different dynamics because the value of digital resources is rooted in exchange value, while the value of processing resources is rooted in use-value.
Paper long abstract:
VR Chat enables users to create avatars and traverse worlds in virtual reality. Given how dependent VR Chat is on user-created content, it is an example of what Boellstorff (2008) called “creationist capitalism” (206). However, it has not incorporated blockchain into its platform, so it does not serve as a marketplace for NFTs. Avatars are one source of prestige in VR Chat, and therefore they are a potential source of stratification. Yet avatars can be endlessly copied with the user’s permission. Hence, user permission serves as a gatekeeper of the equal or unequal distribution of digital resources. The ease of copying avatars keeps the desire for exclusivity from generating nascent forms of stratification that center on anything resembling an NFT. I will compare avatar distribution with another, more stable source of stratification in VR chat: processing power. While many worlds can be accessed by users of the low-cost Oculus Quest, the more complex worlds require a higher-powered PC to access. I argue that digital resources and processing resources both provide sources of stratification in virtual worlds, but reflect distinct dynamics due in part to their distinct relationship to the non-virtual material base of users. The value of digital recourses centers mostly on exchange value, while the value of processing resources remains rooted in use-value.