Hello all,
We are pleased to introduce the last session of the Flashlab seminar's
quarterly cycle, "Artificial Intelligence & History". The session will be held
online on Thursday, March 13 (4-5:30 p.m CET) and will feature a talk by
Apolline Taillandier, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Cambridge
(Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Department of Politics and
International Studies, Newnham College) and the University of Bonn (Center for
Science and Thought) entitled:
"An 'epistemological Perestroika': Constructionists and the end of the Cold
War"
Abstract: Historians of neoliberalism have recently analysed the conservative
elements within libertarianism, a doctrine centred on individual rights and
commonly described as the prevailing political language of Silicon Valley
technofuturism (Deudney 2020; Jensen 2022; Slobodian 2023). This story sits
well within a common scholarly narrative tracing the politics of computers
from a bureaucratic and military disciplinary project to an anti-authoritarian
tool, to the epitome of a neo-reactionary tech industry reinforcing dominant
racial and gender orders (Agar 2003; Turner 2006; Fourcade and Healy 2024). In
this paper, I shed light on feminist and decolonial elements within
technolibertarianism. Focusing on constructionism, an approach to computer
education advocated notably by engineers at MIT during the 1980s and 1990s
(Harel and Papert 1991), I explain how it can be understood as a variant of
libertarian social theory, and I describe two of its key tenets: its vision of
society, and its vision of global order.
First, constructionists aimed to change school curricula through the
introduction of computers but also to abolish authority and transform social
relations. Informed by cybernetic models of decentralised organisation and
feminist epistemologies, alternative computer design would break with
homogenising and oppressive pedagogies, turn teachers from state technicians
into consultants, and enable individuals with different abilities, genders
and ways of knowing to flourish. Instead of an essentially hierarchical or
rigidly classified order, the classroom was closer to a spontaneous market
enabling common rules to emerge from interactions between computers, children
and teachers. As such, it offered a model of the future society and a space
for experimenting with computer cultures.
Second, constructionists supported a form of market globalism. The battle for
the future of education aimed to expand computerised education worldwide but
also to undermine the rampant centralism in the US school system, a vast
network of institutions more akin to a state bureaucracy than to the society
of physicists (Papert 1990). Looking to the fall of the Soviet Union as well
as to the end of Apartheid in South Africa, constructionists sought to change
knowledge production globally. Rather than the final victory of liberal
values, the end of the Cold War promised to destabilise state structures and
the underlying hegemony of central planning.
All practical information (such as the visioconference link) will be
communicated through the seminar's mailing list. To subscribe:
flashlab@framalistes.org
Alternatively, please feel free to reach out directly to get the connection
link (assia.wirth@universite-paris-saclay.fr)
The seminars next quarterly cycle will focus on contemporary issues in
artificial intelligence. The first session will be held in French on Thursday
3 April (4pm-5.30pm), with Hlne Herman (CEMS, EHESS, INSP) for a
presentation entitled: La fabrique des normes harmonises sur lintelligence
artificielle : diffrents types dacteurs lpreuve de la bureaucratie
europenne .
The seminars full programme is available on our website:
le programme
Looking forward to seeing many of you,
Valentin Goujon & Assia Wirth
---------------------
Assia Wirth
PhD candidate
Inria & ENS Paris-Saclay
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