Data is Dead: Welcome to the New Future of the Tech Industry
The future of the tech industry is in infrastructure, not data. This means that those companies that control key infrastructure, like chips and cloud computing, hold sway. Companies like ASML, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services (AWS), rather than X or Meta, will become the most powerful players. Is it their choices that will influence what our collective futures look like? Do we need to adapt our understanding of power in the tech sector to this new reality? Conversation with Prof. Michael Veale of UCL and Sjoera Nas of Privacy Company. (February 2024) Link here
Eaten by the Internet: Power in Digital Society
The Internet eats our world. Those who control the Internet control the bounds of public speech, economic production, social cohesion, and politics, making its infrastructure a core political terrain in the networked age. This talk will launch a new book about the power of Big Tech and the future of the digital society, Eaten by the Internet. The discussion with the book’s authors and editor will make Internet infrastructure visible as a key force of political power and urge us to ask how can we ensure the Internet will sustain us, rather than consume us? (November 2023) Link here
Dagstuhl Seminar Talk on Accountable Software: Is software eaten by the cloud?
In this talk, I focus on the growing importance of cloud computing in the context of the future of software ecosystems. In particular, I argue that the future of software lives on the cloud. Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computing resources (such as storage and infrastructure), as services over the internet, at scale. It ostensibly eliminates the need for individuals and businesses to self-manage physical resources and allows them to pay for what they use. Many software companies buy computing resources from a small set of tech behemoths, including Google, Microsoft, and AWS. But this perceived convenience comes at a price. (October 2023)
(No recording but here is the seminar report)
Recent Podcast Interviews
Futures Podcast with Luke Robert Mason: Eaten by the Internet. February 2024 Listen here
Response-ability podcast by Dawn Walters: Engineering Cultures and Internet Infrastructure Politics. June 2021. Listen here
The Anti-Dystopians by Alina Utrata: Human Rights and Internet Infrastructure. November 2021. Listen here