Digital infrapuncture is a term that draws attention to stress points in infrastructures and stimulates thinking about how to intervene. As private, corporate infrastructures slowly encroach on the public realm, they may enable privacy breaches through user data extraction, or determine the agency of the user, or may perpetuate systemic inequalities through their very design. Paying attention to the harms they produce is paramount.
Track 1
Digital Infrapunctures
Introduction: Deb Verhoeven
Deb Verhoeven's work explores the intersection between cinema studies and other disciplines such as history, information management, geo-spatial science, statistics, urban studies and economics.
Question 1: What are digital infrapunctures?
A video contribution by Deb Verhoeven.
Question 2: How do we identify stress points in digital infrastructures?
A video contribution by Deb Verhoeven.
Question 3: Who can create infrapunctures?
A video contribution by Deb Verhoeven.
Question 4: Could you expand on the analogy of acupuncture in relation to infrastructures?
A video contribution by Deb Verhoeven.
Question 5: Could you give some examples of infrapunctural interventions?
A video contribution by Deb Verhoeven.
Track 2
Harm in Computational Infrastructures
Introduction: Harm in Computational Infrastructures
Previously we have become acquainted with a view on digital infrastructures that highlights their reparative and connective characteristics. In this track we will trace the term computational infrastructures, which forefronts how infrastructures are shaped by political, economic and social forces, how they are made from material elements and how they move said elements in the world.
Introduction: Seda Gürses
An introduction to computational infrastructures and Protective Optimization Technologies (POTs).
Question 1: What are computational infrastructures?
A video contribution by Seda Gürses.
Question 2: What are elements that shape (or are shaped by) computational infrastructures?
A video contribution by Seda Gürses.
Question 3: How can we understand the harm caused by digital infrastructures and the systems which deploy them?
A video contribution by Seda Gürses.
Question 4: What interventions are possible to mitigate or eliminate this harm?
A video contribution by Seda Gürses.
QUESTION 5: What kind of limitations do you see in the realisation of these interventions?
A video contribution by Seda Gürses.
Track 3
Introduction to Bots
Introduction: Bots
This track will go over an introduction to what bots are, what they do and their importance in shaping power relations on digital infrastructures.
Introduction: Andreas Hepp
Unpacking the terms Communicative bots, communicative embodiment and infrastructural embodiment.
Question 1: What are communicative bots and why are they important to study now?
A video contribution of Andreas Hepp.
Question 2: What main types of communicative bots are there?
A video contribution of Andreas Hepp.
Question 3: How do bots relate to digital infrastructures?
A video contribution of Andreas Hepp.
Question 4: How does communication change in the presence of bots?
A video contribution of Andreas Hepp.
Track 4
Bot Logic
Introduction: Bot Logic
Could bots be a form of digital infrapunctures? Using the proposed concept of bot logic, we'll be looking at what kind of user a bot is.
Bot Logic vs. Platform Logic
Bot logic disperses, fragments, develops intimate knowledge & encourages new habit formation.
Some Examples of Bots
What are some examples of bots?
Bot behaviour
As programmable objects bots have particular action modes.
Track 5
Infrapunctural Imaginaries (exercise)
Infrapunctural imaginaries (exercise)
In this track we will use the practice of script writing to imagine a bot as a potential digital infrapuncture.
Step 1: Unnerving norms and values
Start of the exercise.
Step 2: Teasing out a stress point
Continuation of the excercise.
Step 3: How does the bot punctuate?
Continuation of the excercise.
Step 4: Script writing
Last step of the excercise.
Track 6
Critical Interventions Through Bots (exercise)
Critical Interventions through Bots (exercise)
In this track we'll be looking at the materiality of bots. Together we'll go over a simple code template which is connected to a bot running on a Mastodon instance.
Materiality of Bots
Code, APIs and background processes.
Logics of Programming
Variables, data objects, loops and if/else statements.
Make a bot
How to make a bot?
Track 7
Crossroads
Retracing the different tracks
This track is an overview of what we have been discussing in this module.
Bots as Digital Infrapunctures
Wrap up of the module. Thinking through infrastructural embodiments for times of infrastructural complexity.