Eurograd message

                Dear colleagues,

In reply to the (many) calls to attend the 4s Science and Technology 
conference in Seattle in 2025, especially to join panels on heat stress 
and global warming.

This has been posted to the German NTA and GWTF mailing list already, 
and I was encouraged to post it here, too.

*I want to argue that /you/ /should not fly t/o the US to attend this 
conference on the following five (ecological) grounds *(As a background. 
I am a researcher in STS myself and I know the STS community around 4s 
and EASST pretty well and attended quite some conferences):

1) To be crystal clear: Academic meetings on a global scale are crucial 
to exchange perspectives and advance science. However, this is a 
conference happening in the global north (US), which makes it very hard 
for people from the global south to get there (especially given the 
racist Trump administration taking over now), and easy(ier) for 
Europeans to get there. US border Visa admissions are super tough on 
non-Western countries.

2) Climate change and CO2 emissions are a global issue. As 4S takes 
place now anyway, spare the global CO2 budget and let somebody from a 
less privileged country take part in this conference. To them this 
conference matters much more than to you. /But/...

3) don't worry! This will not be the last time: These conferences happen 
frequently every to every second year, plus many regional/national 
pendents (from STS Italia to STS Germany). You will not miss out. 4S 
will come to Europe sooner or later.

3) The 4S / EASST community is extremely intransparent on how it spends 
its budget as an association, it very often did not facilitate hybrid 
participation options in past events. Hybrid sessions were offered for 
Hawaii, but not for EASST/4S in Amsterdam last year (I was there). It 
acts pretty ignorant of ecological issues. For example: The 2023 4S 
conference happened in Honolulu 
, Hawaii, (now a US state 
which was lawlessly overthown by US 
 
marines) even themed "endangered Ecologies". Hawaii is very hard and 
expensive to reach by flight. Also, Hawaii inhabits an ecosystem 
that reacts 
/very/ sensitive to climate change. Enjoy the blatant irony.

5) You are practising a double standard. The STS and TA community cannot 
preach sustainability and the authority of science, warning against 
global warning and post-truth-politics, but act carelessly in its 
scientific practice - and jet around the world. My personal opinion: 
Especially senior and established researchers who have tenured positions 
should act as an example.

6) My intention is not to engage in a kind of "blame" or "guilt game" 
but move forward. The solution, as Jeanette Hofmann rightfully pointed 
out to me as a reply, cannot be that no-one from the global North comes 
to the global North conferences - then the global South also needn't to go.

*However, It should not be impossible to do something here and I would 
simply urge the current 4S and EASST boards to show a bit more 
commitment, transparency and accountability in these sensitive issues. *

Very open to rebuttals.

All the best

Jascha Bareis

Am 15.01.25 um 21:31 schrieb Nona Schulte-Römer via Eurograd:
>
> The WAVEMATTERS  team invites you to submit 
> to 4S Panel 133 . We look 
> forward to discussing with you in Seattle *how waves remake cities*! 
> Best, Ignacio Farías, Jorge Martín Sainz de los Terreros, Brett 
> Mommersteeg and Nona Schulte-Römer
>
> "How waves remake cities, or: in the beginning was the reverb"
>
> Waves challenge cities in multiple, but also ambivalent, unclear ways: 
> from light and noise pollution, heatwaves and heat stress, flooding, 
> sea rise, earthquakes, the trembling of buildings in war zones, 
> material vibrations from various sources, to convivial gatherings, 
> music events, and wireless connections and infrastructures.
>
> Cities reverberate with waves that ripple, resignify, distort, and 
> interfere across times and spaces. It is difficult to pinpoint their 
> beginnings, to identify singular causes, delineate their overflows, or 
> contain them within zones. They cross-cut and blur boundaries. 
> Atmospheric in essence, they are hard to grasp, perceptually, 
> conceptually, and representationally. In their effects, they generate 
> overlapping, but disjointed forms of coexistence. They can 
> imperceptibly reverberate like background noise, taking time to 
> notice, only to snap into legibility as a persistent reminder of urban 
> life. But they also generate interferences that keep on returning, 
> like muddled repetitions texturing experience, or unmanageable issues 
> that slip out of attempts to know, contain, adapt or prevent. 
> Technical solutions deployed to resolve issues related to wave matters 
> can interfere and distort one another, causing unforeseen 
> consequences, side effects, folds and loops, that reverberate the city.
>
> This panel is interested in what it means for a city to reverberate, 
> and how waves provide opportunities to rethink the urban and, by 
> extension, the social. While STS research has been committed to 
> studying verbs - makings and doings, science and technology in action 
> - this is an invitation to think with waves, to explore what happens 
> if in the beginning was a reverb. We invite contributions that explore 
> how waves and wave-like phenomena trouble, unsettle, scatter and 
> remake urban modes of existence, and how different practices, whether 
> expert, technical, designerly, or everyday, respond, interfere, or 
> re-enact them.
>
> EASST's Eurograd mailing list --eurograd-easst.net@lists.easst.net
> Archive:https://lists.easst.net/hyperkitty/list/eurograd-easst.net@lists.easst.net/
> Edit your delivery settings there using Account dropdown, Mailman settings.
> Website:https://easst.net/easst_eurograd/
> Meet us on Mastodon:https://assemblag.es/@easst
> Or X:https://twitter.com/STSeasst
-- 

*Jascha Bareis*(Profile) 
(Scholar) 
(LinkedIn) 


Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis(ITAS) 


Karlsruher Institute of Technology(KIT) 


Research Group Digital Technology and Societal Change(FG DigIT) 



*Recent Publications*

Ask Me Anything ! 😈How ChatPGT Got Hyped Into Being.SOC ARXIV Preprint 


The Trustification of AI. Disclosing the bridging pillars that tie Trust 
and AI together.Big Data & Society 


Technology Hype: Dealing with bold expectations and overpromising, with 
M. Roßmann and F.Bordignon.Journal of Technology Assessment in Theory 
and Practice 
EASST's Eurograd mailing list -- eurograd-easst.net@lists.easst.net
Archive: https://lists.easst.net/hyperkitty/list/eurograd-easst.net@lists.easst.net/
Edit your delivery settings there using Account dropdown, Mailman settings.
Website: https://easst.net/easst_eurograd/
Meet us on Mastodon: https://assemblag.es/@easst
Or X: https://twitter.com/STSeasst