I’m back in Sweden, this time in Uppsala, on the campus of the university of the same name, to attend the 4th meeting of ICTs and Society. Convened by Christian Fuchs and colleagues, this fascinating lineup features timely discussions of, among other things, global capitalism, information and knowledge labor/labor in ICT, organization, theories of “the information society,” surveillance, privatization, policy and activism – so many topics near and dear to my heart and at the center of my own intellectual endeavors. Vincent Mosco and Graham Murdock set the stage in this morning’s plenary with their “reloading” (as Christian Fuchs describes it) of Marx by highlighting the ongoing relevance of Marx today against the backdrop of global labor, social movements, uprisings and crises – with the latter’s relationship to emergent and extant ICT certainly up for discussion.
Early into the first paper session and I’ve bumped into numerous colleagues and friends from past conferences, as well as other scholars whose work has proven illuminating to me (Christian Fuchs, Trebor Scholz, Nick Dyer-Witheford and Will Peekhaus among many). I am looking forward to a challenging and provocative few days, and am tweeting my observations and particularly salient insights @ubiquity75 using the hashtag #CDP21. Do follow along if you’re interested.
Sarah T. Roberts | The Illusion of Volition 