Event | ‘Critiquing Big Tech’ – Conference and Public Lecture

*Image: Cologne 2023 (photo by Niels Niessen; street art by Innerfields)

Event | ‘Critiquing Big Tech’ – Conference and Public Lecture
Dates: 6-7 june 2024
Times: 9:30-19:00
Location: De Nieuwe Vorst, Tilburg
Contact: bigtechconference@protonmail.com
Registration deadline: 9 February 2024
Contact: bigtechconference@protonmail.com
Credits: 2 ECTS

Keynote speaker: Tiziana Terranova (author of After the Internet)
Tiziana Terranova will also host a 1 ECTS seminar on 5 June. More information here.

This conference brings together critiques of how Big Tech invades all domains of public and private life, transforming those domains in the process. The conference explores how the humanities can contribute to a better understanding of this development. At the same time, we are interested in how humanities research changes in relation to this development. While critiquing Big Tech, it is important to acknowledge that for many, platforms like Instagram, Tumblr, and X (Twitter) are places of consciousness building and activism. It is also safe to say that without these platforms, movements like MeToo, Trans Liberation, and Black Lives Matter would not have happened the way they did. Yet while these platforms help liberate personal and collective life in some respects, ultimately they are not designed for emancipation, but to maximize user engagement. The conference examines the ways in which Big Tech interpellates people as users, through its technologies and its discourses. We will also discuss potential forms of resistance against this interpellation.

In proposing a humanities perspective on Big Tech, we tackle what we perceive as a crisis of the human form in the age of large-scale platforms, personalized AI, and the algorithmic condition. Theorists including Patricia Ticineto Clough (The User Unconscious), Nick Couldry & Ulises Mejias (Costs of Connection), and McKenzie Wark (Capitalism Is Dead) have argued that Big Tech threatens the very integrity and sovereignty of individual and collective human existence. At the same time, the existence of both humans and non-humans is threatened by climate change and the continuous appropriation of the environment for the benefits of Big Tech and economic growth (as argues for example Mél Hogan in “Big Data Ecologies”). What does it mean to practice the Humanities in algorithmic societies facing political and ecological crises? How to understand the human subject and its relation to technology and the environment in light of these conditions? How to critique Big Tech’s understanding of the human subject, its extractive economic model and continuous infrastructural and spatial expansion, and its visions of the future? How to work towards alternatives?

Public Keynote Lecture

The Question of Technology in the Common(s) (public lecture by Tiziana Terranova, 6 June 2024, 17:00-18:30*, De Nieuwe Vorst Tilburg)

The talk returns on the terrain of the commons and the common – as terms that over the first two decades of the 21st century played a central role in positing the possibility of a radical alternative to the established and dominant system of social, economic and political relations which is responsible for the multiple and convergent crises of the present – such as the ecological, economic, social and political crises (Hardt and Negri; Venn; Berlant). The talk asks what it means today to talk about technology and the commons as opposed to the early 2000s when the notion of the digital commons, the creative commons, and commons-based peer production were posed. The conditions whereby the commons and technology are thinkable today include the massive informatization of society as well as the consolidation of the corporate stronghold over technology including the rise of Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Cyberwar and the Green Economy.

Format & Application

The conference somewhat changes up the traditional conference format, creating more space for conversation and workshops. We ask for short 10-minute individual presentations. During the workshops hosted by the conference organizers, participants are invited to critically engage with the methodological, epistemic, and ecological implications of studying Big Tech. To apply, please fill out the form on

https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/H-8AnSFOUBAa5xr17f4MLwF-QTa5AQXpQB-Olfw1Vys/

We ask you to briefly describe (1) the topic of your presentation and ideally also your object of focus (if your paper is mostly theoretical, still provide an example of an object you connect to); (2) your intervention (the argument you plan to develop, or how you envision your contribution); (3) a brief reflection on methodology and how your contribution speaks to the changing humanities. In addition, please indicate your preference for the workshop you would like to attend on day 2 of the conference (How to design a user?; How to study big data ecologies?; How to de-Google Learning?). Finally, we ask participants to ideally participate in the full conference. On the evening before the conference (June 5) we will have an informal dinner (paid for by the organization) in the center of Tilburg. The conference itself will take place in De Nieuwe Vorst theater, also in the Tilburg city center.

For questions, please email bigtechconference@protonmail.com