Between Nostalgia and Projection: Is there a Digital Present?
Dr. Anna- Maria Walter, University of Oulu
Digital users’ (in)ability to effectively juggle competing presences of on- and offline is a topic of much debate. In this keynote, I discuss whether online presence equates to a digital present. Drawing on ethnographic work from youth in northern Pakistan and outdoor enthusiasts in the Alps, I want to complicate ideas about the hybridity of everyday lives and critically examine the complementarity and interchangeability of human (inter)action on- and offline.
While not discounting the value and quality of intimacy which mobile communication can engender, I question whether time spent online rather hints at the past and the future, given that many users either draw on shared memories or imaginaries, or seek to engineer an upcoming moment.
To what extent does the flirt on an app aim towards a physical meeting in the future? Does a post of yesterday’s ski outing fill the void of a current presence? And how does content produced, shared, and commented online serve as a form of assurance of one’s own or group values rather than stimulate interpersonal exchange and experience-making?
I explore how digital copresence differs from the moment in which we set the phone or laptop aside and “fully engage” in activities or directly with people, without technology’s distraction.
Climate Change, Algorithms and Governance of Matter.
Professor Hannah Knox, University College London
Recent concerns about how to govern the appearance and use of algorithms, have largely focused on the problem of using algorithms to classify and categorize people – raising issues around ethics, bias and trust of algorithmic systems. However, algorithms are also being used as methods for the control and management of materials – from soil to carbon, cars to electricity.
Drawing on discussions in material culture and infrastructure studies, this keynote proposes a language and approach for exploring the algorithmic governance of matter. Specifically, I turn to the use of algorithms and data in the governance of energy in the UK, in the context of climate change and associated energy crises.
Through a study of the use of digital technologies and algorithmic forms of analysis and display informing energy projects in a town in the North of England, I explore what algorithmic practices do to the practices of engaging and thinking energetic relations. Tracing energy through dashboards, maps and monitors, I interrogate how data produces energy as a problem of scale. Scaling energy is explored as a political technique which distributes and frames people and practices in ways that have tangible effects on understandings of political efficacy, and the distribution of political agency.
Mimetic Fascism: On belonging and inspirational violence in the age of virality.
Associate Professor Cathrine Thorleifsson, University of Oslo
New and emerging digital technologies are rapidly utilized by netizens to forge communities and spread ideas. The past decade, the combination of anonymity with a lack of moderation has made particular web-based forums into gathering places for white supremacists who anonymously produce conspiracy narratives and calls for redemptive violence.
Based on fieldwork in a fascist digital subculture, this keynote examines violent escalations of internet culture and the online practices that are utilized in processes of belonging and radicalization.
Combining analysis of user behavior with face to face interviews, I shall argue that the cultural practices enabled by digital infrastructure are particularly powerful for the amplification of the logic of an endangered ultra-nation that needs urgent violent defense.
Users forge belonging and are radicalized through transgressive play frames, where violence is promoted through memetic irony and aggrieved masculinity and pain is transformed into heroic supremacy. Cyberfascism co-produced among users across continents lends itself to inspirational violence whereby actors imitate forms of political violence based on examples carried out elsewhere.
Finally, I shall offer some recommendations for preventing and countering violence in this specific digital milieu.