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Call for contributions to workshop and book
 Organised by Sally Wyatt, Maastricht University
Science, Technology and Society
(MUSTS) research
programme and Department of Society
Studies, both in the Faculty of
Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS)
Workshop will be held on 12-13 June 2025 in Maastricht
 In recent years, perhaps stimulated by the growing awareness of the power of
digital technologies, there have been calls for engineers and designers to
advance values by design, such as democracy, participation, privacy and
transparency. This builds on earlier inclusive design and access-for-all
initiatives. These positive developments demonstrate awareness that social
values and political choices can be incorporated into the design of the
technologies that people use at work, in the home and the hospital, while
shopping and engaging with public administration, and in the wider built
environment. But not all encounters with technologies are fulfilling, and some
are designed to exclude or harm people, animals and nature. This workshop
focuses on those technologies that could be described as hostile or
exclusionary by design.
Within Science and Technology Studies (STS), one of the most famous (and
contested) parables is the low-hanging overpasses on Long Island, described by
Langdon Winner (1980) (for the
contestation, see the 1999 debate in Social Studies of
Science between Bernward Joerges,
Steve Woolgar and Geoff Cooper). Designed and built in the early 20th century,
only private cars could pass under them, at a time when cars were the preserve
of the rich, so the story goes. More recently, Robert
Rosenberger (2018)
has described how policy and design work together to create what he calls
callous objects that push homeless people out of public spaces. Benches with
armrests are a good example as they are designed to stop people lying down.
Geert Lovink explores
the sadness by design of the ever-ubiquitous digital platforms.
In this workshop, participants are invited to share their own examples and
theoretical reflections. In addition to the examples above, there are the
obvious hostile technologies of nuclear and other weapons. We can also think
about hostile infrastructures such as the Berlin Wall (1961-1989), and
surveillance technologies, not solely the preserve of totalitarian regimes.
When Home Secretary in the UK, Teresa May (2010-2016, later Prime Minister)
proudly introduced policies to create a hostile environment in order to
deter immigrants. This included byzantine forms, billboards and vans with Go
Home painted on the sides. Other examples can be found in medicine and
healthcare. For example, breast cancer screening can itself be painful, but
also lead to personal and system costs if over-diagnosis exceeds early
prevention. Some technologies start with benign design and intentions, but
through decades of (under-) repair and maintenance might become hostile.
The purpose of this workshop is to gather empirical accounts and theoretical
reflections, and to develop possibilities for interventions at different
levels (design, policy, political action). Contributions that address the
following topics and questions are welcome, but are not restricted to these
topics:
1.    Case studies (past and present) of hostile technologies, describing for
whom they are hostile, and under what conditions.
2.    Case studies of hostile technologies that have been successfully (or
not) re-purposed or resisted.
3.    Case studies of initially benign technologies but which become hostile
as a result of under-repair and maintenance.
4.    Items 2 and 3 relate to the complementarity of friendly and hostile
by design, including dual-use technologies, transformations of one into the
other, and changes over time in perception of what constitutes hostile.
5.    Typologies of hostile technologies, by application domain, historical
moment, geographical location, or something else.
6.    Theoretical explorations of hostile technologies. Can we move beyond
Winners distinction between inherently and contingently political
technologies?
7.    Hostile is a normative term. How can calling a technology hostile be
justified?
8.    What is meant by the qualification hostile? In what sense does it
differ from the more general notion of undesirable?
9.    What is the opposite of hostile? Friendly, inviting, peaceful,
neutral?
10.  How can technologies be simultaneously hostile and not hostile?
11.  How can recognition of hostile technologies inform future design, policy
and political action?

Practical information
Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be sent to Sally Wyatt
(sally.wyatt@maastrichtuniversity.nl) by 8 January 2025. Abstracts must include the following: author name,
contact details, and a maximum of three literature references. At the second
stage, authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to submit a revised and
substantially extended abstract together with a photo of their hostile
technology if applicable or other illustration, to be included in the workshop
material. The number of participants will not exceed 25 people.
There is no charge to attend the workshop. Lunch, dinner and other
refreshments will be provided.
Participants must arrange and pay for their own travel and accommodation.
Wyatt is seeking a publisher for an edited collection, but no definite plans
are yet available.
Important dates

  *
     Deadline for abstracts  8 January 2025
  *
     Notification of acceptance  5 February 2025, at the latest
  *
     Extended abstract, with photo or illustration  7 May 2025
  *
      Workshop material circulated to participants  1 June 2025
  *
      Workshop  12-13 June 2025, in Maastricht
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