Suchergebnisse

Over the past decade, numerous disciplines have taken on speculation as a method for research, a tool for thought, or a topic of study. In so doing, sociology, politics, design, geography and other disciplines have all helped to readdress the nature and potential of speculation, as a way of thinking, but also as a way to bridge the gap between theory and practice, something that often plagues philosophy. Despite the variety of perspectives in this range of disciplines, they often draw upon a common philosophical canon. This paper explores current discussions of speculation in the context of speculative philosophy, as well as work in new materialisms from Karen Barad, and Jane Bennett, to address some potential exchanges between new materialisms and speculation. The paper concludes with a brief description of a symposium held in 2018 that explored these themes across disciplines. It advocates further exchanges between speculative and new materialist approaches, as one way of figuring the place of matter in theory.

Most people use disaster apps infrequently, primarily only in situations of turmoil, when they are physically or emotionally vulnerable. Personal data may be necessary to help them, data protections may be waived. In some circumstances, free movement and liberties may be curtailed for public protection, as was seen in the current COVID pandemic. Consuming and producing disaster data can deepen problems arising at the confluence of surveillance and disaster capitalism, where data has become a tool for solutionist instrumentarian power (Zuboff 2019, Klein 2008) and part of a destructive mode of one world worlding (Law 2015, Escobar 2020). The special use of disaster apps prompts us to ask what role consumer protection could play in safeguarding democratic liberties. Within this work, a set of current approaches are briefly reviewed and two case studies are presented of what we call appropriation or design against datafication. These combine document analysis and literature research with several months of online and field ethnographic observation. The first case study examines disaster app use in response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the second explores COVID Contact Tracing in Taiwan in 2020/21. Against this backdrop we ask, 'how could and how should consumer protection respond to problems of surveillance disaster capitalism?' Drawing on our work with the is IT ethical? Exchange, a co-designed community platform and knowledge exchange for disaster information sharing, and a Societal Readiness Assessment Framework that we are developing alongside it, we explore how co-design methodologies could help define answers.