Hearing the Planetary

Sep 25 2023

What can sound tell us about the future? Recounting his encounter with the Fjallsárlón glacial lagoon, Lukáš LikavĨan invokes a situated philosophy through the act of listening.

Fortune or calamity? A Thai perspective on ChatGPT

Sep 18 2023

By discussing Thailand’s take on ChatGPT with Prof. Soraj Hongladarom (Chulalongkorn University, Thailand), we can appreciate how different approaches to ChatGPT are less due to culturally diverging metaphysical interpretations of reality than due to culturally diverging relations to trust.

Challenges of flood control technologies on Kosi River in India

Sep 4 2023

Flood-control structures on rivers shape the experience of living with floods. In this post, Kanisha Singh reflects on the ambivalence around these structures – their promises and risks – on the Kosi River in India.

Different regimes of technosolutionism: AI and the development/underdevelopment dilemma in Brazil

Aug 21 2023

In this post, Guilherme Cavalcante Silva shows how technological solutionism in recent AI developments in Brazil is crucially affected by the question of dependency. He suggests that to deal with technology policy in peripheries, STS scholars need to address the social constitution of the very notion of development and underdevelopment.

Speculative Visions, a Decade Later

Aug 14 2023

This post reflects on changes in STS through a discussion of the tenth anniversary of UC Berkeley’s 2013 conference, “Speculative Visions of Race, Technology, Science, and Survival.”

AI and the Micro-Materialities of Hardware: Reflections on Theory and Methods

Jul 24 2023

In this blog post, Ludovico Rella delves into the GPU computing hardware behind recent advances in AI to reveal a site of epistemological, geopolitical, and economic significance worthy of closer inquiry.

Writing in STS as a transnational collaborative practice

Jul 17 2023

Mariana Pitta Lima reflects upon her experiences of participating in the STS writing workshop held at the 4S 2022 meeting in Cholula, Mexico. She describes how making space for and encouraging the participation of early career researchers in such workshops could help reduce transnational inequalities and demonstrate the relevance of STS research originating from the global South.

Where the social studies of science and religion meets STS

May 29 2023

In this post, Joseph wonders about the curious absence of STS approaches to understanding the relationship between science and (non)religion in society. He suggests that considering the interaction between science and religion using STS methods could potentially help examine scientific institutions in a new light.

'Japanese garden on Hungarian rooftop': diversity and memory for sustainability futures

May 15 2023

In this post, Sylvanus Doe wonders what a Japanese Garden was doing on a rooftop in the Central European University (CEU), Hungary. His experience with the Japanese Garden at the CEU prompts him to ask a pertinent question: 'Is global sustainability possible?'

Genealogies of Iran’s Gender Politics: Technopolitical Space, Feminine Body, and Knowledge Hierarchies

May 1 2023

In this blog post, Ata Heshmati traces the genealogy of gender politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). He discusses the history of the emergence of technopolitical gender hierarchies in postrevolutionary Iran within three categories: space, body, and knowledge.

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