Digital devices are everywhere, shaping, ordering and changing everyday lives and social relations in ways we struggle to fully understand. From social media apps to remote sensing, from political mobilization to AGI, the speed and depth of digital entanglements challenge distinctions between what is true and what is fake, and between the private and the public, with implications for democracy, identity, and belonging.
Digital imagery blurs distance and proximity; rendering remote seascapes and landscapes legible to both environmental authorities and investors. GPS tracking and automated sensors facilitate everyday surveillance of both fellow humans and non-human species, with implications for care practices, privacy, and husbandry relations.
This conference, which marks the end of the UiO based research project ‘Private Lives’ is dedicated to contributing to an ethnographic understanding of the predicaments of the digital era with specific attention to everyday lives in digitalized worlds. Investigating digital sociality across a broad set of lived experiences and everyday applications, we seek to enhance critical reflection and a shared understanding of digital challenges and dilemmas in the Nordic region and beyond.
The conference includes keynote lectures, panels and an exhibit on Digital Sociality. A detailed program will soon be available.
Keynote speakers:
Dr. Anna- Maria Walter, University of Oulu: Between Nostalgia and Projection - Is there a Digital Present? See abstract
Professor Hannah Knox, University College London: Climate Change, Algorithms and Governance of Matter. See abstract.
Associate Professor Cathrine Thorleifsson, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo: Mimetic Fascism: On belonging and inspirational violence in the age of virality. See abstract