Why is human movement increasingly conceived of as a logistical problem? Global forms of human movement have been occurring for centuries, but popular discourse and policies often construct contemporary human movement as exceptional: an unprecedented global problem that requires new techniques of management and logistics. Scholarship situates logistics as a site that articulates social relations of power and differentiates human worth. In this paper, we ask how human movement becomes transformed into a logistical matter in the first place.

There is a long history of psychology linked to economics. What is economics? It is the study of how people make decisions about resources or about money. Hayek was very interested in many sciences, particularly the new ones that emerged after World War II about systems, communication and information. He was very interested in models of decision making. His whole neoliberal economic theory is based on what he calls the limits of knowledge, the fact that human beings do not have complete information about our world, that we make imperfect and often bad irrational decisions.

The current state of the planet, marked by climate change and biodiversity loss, presents one of humanity’s most urgent challenges, further exacerbated by a projected population increase to nearly 10 billion by 2050. Scientific and technological advancements are vital for monitoring and mitigating these issues, offering solutions for humanity to coexist with a changing planet in a sustainable way.

As health systems increasingly adopt digital solutions, such as remote monitoring and telemedicine, the use of health apps is becoming increasingly widespread. Meanwhile, data protection regulations and digital transformation initiatives are making the individual responsible for protecting their health data.

KEYNOTE: Orit Halpern at Reconfigurations of Educational (In)Equality in a Digital World September 26, 2024 Buenos Aires

The conference Planetary Design: Reclaiming Futures brings together critical thinking and doing around the role of design in making, unmaking and remaking worlds. Starting from the intersection of design, infrastructure, and the planetary environment, it offers a generative platform open to artists, academics, and activists for rethinking design’s role in producing the present and for developing alternative planetary futures. Reflecting on how design makes worlds in the 21st century requires an interdisciplinary effort that addresses it as an intersectional, multi-faceted phenomenon.

In der dritten Ausgabe unserer KI-Reihe geht es um künstliche Intelligenz und Kunst. Kann KI echte Kunst und wie kreativ ist sie? Wo und wie kann sie im künstlerischen Prozess eingesetzt werden und worin liegt das Potenzial von Werken, die mit Hilfe von KI generiert werden? Wer ist dann eigentlich Urheber:in und welche Auswirkungen haben Bots und Algorithmen, die unsere Weltsicht formen, auch mit Blick auf historische Narrative und manifestierte koloniale Machtungleichheiten?

The research studio EXTRAXTIVE PASTS, SUSTAINABLE FUTURES? convened 30 interdisciplinary researchers and artists to investigate Lusatia’s transformation as it hits the ground. We engaged with company officials, city representatives, urban planners, energy researchers and artists from the region to understand their stakes in and perspectives on the transition. By bringing together our respective methodologies, practices and viewpoints, we developed an Energy Transition Inventory, attempting to reconcile the multiple scales of activity that converge as “the energy transition”.

The exhibition is a collaboration between the Chair of Digital Cultures and the DST (Department of Speculative Transformation). The exhibition is about "Thinking the Future Together!“, from 18th April to 18th July 2024 at COSMO, promising an immersive exploration into the transformative landscapes of science and research.

This conference is a collaboration between the Chair of Digital Cultures, Micro-Sociology and Techno-Social Interaction, North American Literature and Future Studies, Human Geography, and Chair of Thermodynamics. It inaugurates stsing e.V., an association doing Science and Technology Studies (STS) in and through Germany, established in 2020. STS is an interdisciplinary field of research and activity interested in how science and technology are practically done and socially embedded.

The project is consciously and critically dedicated to the university, in particular the classroom as a place where thought, research and knowledge are produced. A joint practice is to be developed with students, documented and archived/made available.

New Publication: Orit Halpern, "Beyond Data And Crisis" in Data Power in Action Urban Data Politics in Times of Crisis Edited by: Ola Söderström and Ayona Datta

Dr. Michelle Pfeifer, postdoctoral research associate at the Chair for Digital Cultures, receives funding for the project "Digital Demonisation: LGBT Rights and the Struggle for Democracy." In collaboration with Dr. Billy Holzberg at the Centre for Public Policy Research at King’s College London the project will develop a framework for understanding the demonisation of minorities in digital culture today and build a strategic partnership between TUD and King's as part of the transCampus initiative.

Vol. 4 of Against Catastrophe edited by our postdoctoral research associate Michelle Pfeifer brings together an amazing group of writers, activists, and scholars to analyze solidarities as infrastructural tools, strategies, and actions equipped to imagine and bring about change featuring work by Judith Holz & Bernd Kasparek, Sophie Toupin, Samira Marty, Zahra Malkani, Leil Zahra Mortada, and Ian Alexander.

"Smartness and Wealth" investigates the promise of smart technologies and the future of human habitation. More information coming soon.

In her essay, technology historian Orit Halpern expands on the concept of smartness that shapes Lawrence Lek’s world-building in NOX. NOX is Lawrence Lek’s largest exhibition to date that explores a near-future scenario shaped by the integration of artificial intelligence in urban life.

The "Attending [to] Futures. Matters of Politics in Design Education, Research, Practice" anthology is open access and available through adocs publishing. If “design” is the lens through which we glimpse into possible futures, this volume asks: What are the futures we are capable of imagining? Self-reflexively engaging their own experiences and work, authors in this volume interrogate design in all its convoluted modalities: as activism, practice, discipline, way of knowing, field of study and set of objects.

March 11 - 18, 2024: The Chair for Digital Cultures, the Chair of Micro-Sociology and Techno-Social Interaction, and the Department for Speculative Transformation organize an interdisciplinary research studio on energy transition in Dresden and Lusatia for early-career researchers and practitioners interested in post-mining landscapes and the development of renewable energy infrastructures. The program is aimed at fostering exchange between social sciences, humanities, architecture, engineering, art, and design.

The conference is organized in collaboration between the Chair of Digital Cultures at TU Dresden, Germany, and the Department of Media and Communications at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), UK. The event is funded by the Internationalization Strategy of TU Dresden and the LSE Global Research Fund. It aims to address the international research field on temporalities and histories of smart borders, to trace genealogies and longue durées of media, communication, and information technologies in the control of borders and migration.

The new publication: "MOBILITIES DISPATCH" edited by our scientific associate Nelly Y. Pinkrah featuring an amazing group of writers, historians, scientists and media theorists re-thinking and re-imagining territory, race, class, biology, and extraction through the concept of "mobility" featuring Edna Bonhomme, Josephine Rapp, Sinthujan Varatharajah, Lotte Warnsholdt, Nelly Y. Pinkrah.