Global Digital Cultures Soirée: Surviving the Internet?

Global Digital Cultures Soirée stages lively debate and stimulates fruitful exchanges between UvA researchers working on Global Digital Cultures across the humanities, social sciences, and economics. During this Soirée, AlgoSoc researcher and cultural anthropologist Corinne Cath will join media theorist Geert Lovink to reflect on the contested role of digital infrastructure in society, and its consequences for people, global politics, and the planet. As always, the soirée starts with drinks, and dinner will be served around 19:30. Attendance is free of charge.

Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic and author of Uncanny Networks (2002), Dark Fiber (2002), My First Recession (2003), Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012), Social Media Abyss (2016) and Sad by Design (2019). In 2004 he founded the Institute of Network Cultures at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. His centre organizes conferences, publications and research networks such as Video Vortex (online video), Unlike Us (alternatives in social media), Critical Point of View (Wikipedia), Society of the Query (the culture of search), MoneyLab (internet-based revenue models in the arts). Recent projects deal with digital publishing and the future of art criticism. He also teaches at the European Graduate School (Saas-Fee/Malta) where he supervises PhD students.

Cath is a cultural anthropologist studying the politics of Internet governance, AI and cloud computing. She currently works as a postdoc at the University of Delft in The Netherlands with Dr. Seda Gürses and Prof. Linnet Taylor. She works on questions of computational infrastructure (cloud computing and mobile devices) in the context of the administration of justice. Her current research focuses on how cloud computing and AI are transforming society, the consequences of these transformations for public institutions—and the adequacy of existing technology policy efforts that touch on cloud computing. She is a research affiliate at Cambridge University's Minderoo Centre and a fellow at the critical infrastructure lab at the University of Amsterdam.

After brief presentations from these scholars, the floor will be open for questions and comments from participants. To prepare for the discussion, we encourage attendees to take a look at the amazing work of our speakers, free to download: 

Lovink, Geert. 2022. Extinction Internet. Our Inconvenient Truth Moment. Institute of Network Cultures.

Cath, Corinne. 2023. Eaten by the Internet. Meatspace Press (while this is open access, we encourage those who can to buy a copy at https://meatspacepress.com, which is also a way of supporting Meatspace Press’ commitment to a fairer platform economy).