Science and the Large Hadron Collider: a probe into instrumentation, periodization and classification

On September 19, 2008, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Switzerland, began the world’s highest energy experiments as a probe into the structure of matter and forces of nature. Just nine days after the gala start-up, an explosion occurred in the LHC tunnel that brought the epic collider to a complete standstill. In light of the catastrophic incident that disrupted the operation of the LHC, the paper investigates the relation of temporality to the cycle of work in science, and raises the question: What kind of methodological value should we ascribe to events such as crises or breakdowns? Drawing upon and integrating classical anthropological themes with two and a half years of fieldwork at the LHC particle accelerator complex, the paper explores how the incident in September, which affected the instrument, acquaints us with the distribution of work in the laboratory. The incident discloses that the organization of science is not a homogenous ensemble, but marked by an enormous diversity of tasks and personnel, at the heart of which lies the opposition of theory and practice, or pure and applied. This opposition not only forms the source and sanction of the intricate division of labor found in high-energy physics, but also provides a satisfactory answer to every question involving the interface of experimental science and engineering skill

Sustainable AI Regulation

This paper suggests that AI regulation needs a shift from trustworthiness to sustainability. With the carbon footprint of large generative AI models like ChatGPT or GPT-4 adding urgency to this goal, the paper develops a roadmap to make AI, and technology more broadly, environmentally sustainable. It explores two key dimensions: legal instruments to make AI greener; and methods to render AI regulation more sustainable. Concerning the former, transparency mechanisms, such as the disclosure of the GHG footprint under Article 11 AI Act, could be a first step. However, given the well-known limitations of disclosure, regulation needs to go beyond transparency. Hence, I propose a mix of co-regulation strategies; sustainability by design; restrictions on training data; and consumption caps. This regulatory toolkit may then, in a second step, serve as a blueprint for other information technologies and infrastructures facing significant sustainability challenges due to their high GHG emissions, e.g.: blockchain; metaverse applications; and data centers. The second dimension consists in efforts to render AI regulation, and by implication the law itself, more sustainable. Certain rights we have come to take for granted, such as the right to erasure (Article 17 GDPR), may have to be limited due to sustainability considerations. For example, the subjective right to erasure, in some situations, has to be balanced against the collective interest in mitigating climate change. The paper formulates guidelines to strike this balance equitably, discusses specific use cases, and identifies doctrinal legal methods for incorporating such a "sustainability limitation" into existing (e.g., Art. 17(3) GDPR) and future law (e.g., AI Act). Ultimately, law, computer science and sustainability studies need to team up to effectively address the dual large-scale transformations of digitization and sustainability.Comment: Privacy Law Scholars Conference 202

Reconciling the Social/Human and Technical/Material in IS Research without Trying too Hard

This contribution to the SIGPHIL workshop on reconciling the social and technical in IS research proposes a sociotechnical approach that addresses many issues related to the long-standing duality of the social/human versus the technical/material. It shows that a sociotechnical approach based on work system concepts 1) highlights and potentially bypasses extremely basic ontological stumbling blocks in IS research, 2) incorporates many of the topics and concerns of the original sociotechnical school, 3) illuminates issues related to the duality of the social/human versus the technical/material, and 4) addresses these topics using concepts and terminology that are much easier to understand than the highly sophisticated concepts in the emerging discourse about sociomateriality. While not starting with assumptions such as the constitutive entanglement of people, technologies, and organizations, this approach addresses some of the topics in the sociomateriality discourse and leads to interpretations that may be useful to that discourse as it continues to unfold. After illustrating the IS discipline\u27s pervasive problem of accepting fundamentally different meanings for the same concepts, it shows that the work system framework, work system life cycle model, and a metamodel underlying the work system framework provide a useful scaffolding for examining and interpreting the duality of social/human versus technical/material in real world situations

Keeping time with digital technologies:From real-time environments to forest futurisms

Forests are zones of multiple temporalities. They keep time and are constituted through time-keeping practices. Digital technologies of environmental monitoring and management increasingly organise forest temporalities. This article considers how emerging techno-temporalities measure, pace, and transform forest worlds while reproducing and reconfiguring longer durations of colonial and capitalist technologies. We draw together scholarship on political forests, digital media temporalities, and anti-colonial and Indigenous thinking to analyse the politics of time that materialise through digital technologies and shape what forest pasts, presents, and futures are senseable and possible. In particular, we trace the socio-technical production of the ‘real-time’ as a temporal register of experiencing, knowing, and governing forest environments. Analysing a real-time deforestation alert system in the Amazon, we consider how these temporalities valorise immediate, continuous forest data that can be mobilised for understanding and protecting forests, while simultaneously glossing over durational colonial and capitalist framings of forests that rely on dispossession, extraction, and enclosure. The second half of the article turns to Indigenous futurisms and artistic and socio-political uses of digital platforms that rework forest temporalities. By analysing these multiple and sometimes contradictory temporalities, we suggest that these practices and interventions can challenge dominant timelines and their inequities through pluralistic and redistributive configurations of temporality, land, and data sovereignty

The Enduring Quest for the Future and Its Consequences for Scientific Inquiry

This paper analyses the social quest for the future and the function of its associated futurizing practices. Specifically, it discusses the role of the social sciences and the humanities for understanding these practices under conditions of intense precarity and uncertainty. This is weighed against the need to secure the future as an existential good along with associated political and economic attempts to colonize the future as a means and resource of further securing positions that are often already unhelpfully entrenched. In light of the complex interplay between these factors, this paper ultimately aims to conceptualize a role for the social sciences and the humanities as advocates for a more inclusive, open-ended form of futurizing. It is the argument of this paper that such a conceptualisation would allow for the maximum number of actors, make visible the diversity of futures and protect the essential status of the future as a place of unbounded potential and scope as well as its unavailability

Timing expertise in software development environments

In the ICT industry, and particularly in the software sector, knowledge change, the development of expertise and the construction of professionalism are crucial factors for understanding institutional patterns related to professionalisation. This paper draws upon research on professionalisation in the ICT industry conducted in Germany to explore how time regimes regarding innovation, qualification requirements and working time regulations are linked to the structuration of expertise in different organisational settings and correspond to particular and contextual professionalism. Project deadlines play a crucial role in the structuration of expertise as common pattern for IT firms, whereas ongoing education and quality standards integrated into management systems serve to stabilize professionalism in large IT enterprises

The Health Systems Funding Platform : is this where we thought we were going?

Background: In March 2009, the Task Force for Innovative International Financing for Health Systems recommended "a health systems funding platform for the Global Fund, GAVI Alliance, the World Bank and others to coordinate, mobilize, streamline and channel the flow of existing and new international resources to support national health strategies." Momentum to establish the Health Systems Funding Platform was swift, with the World Bank convening a Technical Workshop on Health Systems Strengthening (HSS), and serial meetings organized to progress the agenda. Despite its potential significance, there has been little comment in peer-reviewed literature, though some disquiet in the international development community around the scope of the Platform and the capacity of the partners, which appears disproportionate to the available information. Methods: This case study uses documentary analysis, participant observation and 24 in-depth interviews to examine the processes of development and key issues raised by the Platform. Results: The findings show a fluid and volatile process, with debate over whether ongoing engagement in HSS by Global Fund and GAVI represents a dilution of organizational focus, risking ongoing support, or a paradigm shift that facilitates the achievement of targeted objectives, builds systems capacity, and will attract additional resources. Uncertainty in the development of the Platform reflects the flexibility of the recently formed global health initiatives, and the instability of donor commitments, particularly in the current financial climate. But implicit in the conflict is tension between key global stakeholders over defining and ownership of the health systems agenda. Conclusions: The tensions appear to have been resolved through a focus on national planning, applying International Health Partnership principles, though the global financial crisis and key personnel changes may yet alter outcomes. Despite its dynamic evolution, the Platform may offer an incremental path towards increasing integration around health systems, that has not been previously possible

Introduction to location-based mobile learning

[About the book] The report follows on from a 2-day workshop funded by the STELLAR Network of Excellence as part of their 2009 Alpine Rendez-Vous workshop series and is edited by Elizabeth Brown with a foreword from Mike Sharples. Contributors have provided examples of innovative and exciting research projects and practical applications for mobile learning in a location-sensitive setting, including the sharing of good practice and the key findings that have resulted from this work. There is also a debate about whether location-based and contextual learning results in shallower learning strategies and a section detailing the future challenges for location-based learning