WTMC PhD Autumn Workshop “Smart” 17-19 December 2018

Conference centre Soeterbeeck, Deursen-Dennenburg, the Netherlands

In this workshop, we will consider how smart technologies function as a sphere where issues of human-machine interaction are played out. Is “smart” shifting from a human attribute to techno-drenched settings, such as smart cities, thereby signaling new forms of subjectivity where machines also sense, record and respond? Is smart a euphemism for new technologies of control as well as out-of-control (big data), or do smart technologies (also) serve as objects of participation and engagement?

STS has since long engaged both empirically and conceptually with the relationships between humans/human societies and technologies. That relationship has variously been articulated as one of integration, co-production, domestication or control.

In this workshop, we will contrast two categorically different approaches to smart technologies. First, we will consider how they actively and often quite literally interfere, with and modify (take over?) the lives we lead and the bodies we have. Second we will consider how smart technologies are caught up in systems of accumulation, circulation and control.

In this workshop we ask, as always, conceptual, historical, methodological, empirical and normative questions about smart technologies posed and pose-able from STS.

Confirmed speakers: Fenneke Sysling, Martijn de Groot.

The registration form for this workshop is now available here.

Please register by Friday, 26 October 2018 !

Costs for WTMC members: meals 10 EUR /day.

Costs for everyone else: 695 EUR, including fee, accommodation and meals.

If you have any content-related questions regarding this workshop, please feel free to contact Anne Beaulieu: [email protected] or Bernike Pasveer: [email protected]

For practical questions please contact Elize Schiweck: [email protected]