[Commlist] CfP: Blackboxed Futures: Multiple Temporalities of Algorithmic Technologies (Online Symposium)

We are inviting you to submit your abstracts to the online symposium on 
algorithms, temporalities, and futures. See the CfP below.

*
*

*Call for Papers: Blackboxed Futures: Multiple Temporalities of 
Algorithmic Technologies (Online Symposium, March 19)*

Algorithmic technologies are nowadays proliferating in various sectors 
of the economy and, more generally, in society. Yet, while their 
widespread development already occupies several areas of contemporary 
life, their material configuration often remains opaque and difficult to 
comprehend, especially when it comes to how algorithms shape the futures 
of people and societies at large. Often, algorithms and AI technologies 
are conceived by their users and creators as “magic” that is beyond 
comprehension — an understanding that has a range of political and 
cultural implications for society (Campolo & Crawford, 2020) and has 
been consequently recognized in the theorizations of economy and 
politics (Pignarre and Stengers, 2012). Questions of vital scholarly and 
political importance emerge – what future(s) do algorithmic technologies 
offer for society, who is included in them and left out, how they can be 
scrutinized and resisted? Do we witness a “temporal stasis in an age of 
automated media” (Andrejevic, Dencik & Trere, 2020) or a “speculative 
time-complex” (Avanessian & Malik, 2016)?

In this symposium, we invite scholars from critical media, cultural, 
science and technology studies, as well as adjacent fields, to further 
reflect upon the imagined futures of algorithmic technologies and 
multiple temporalities enrolled in their continuous enactment. We 
suggest focusing on algorithmic temporalities by thinking of them both 
in terms of related discursive practices and issues of algorithmic 
design. Addressing both theoretical and empirical matters of algorithmic 
temporalities, this symposium aims to shed light on how our thinking 
about time vis-a-vis algorithmic technologies spreads — or meets 
resistance — in different social and political contexts.

The symposium will take place online on*March 19*.  We invite papers 
that reflect (but are by no means limited) upon the following themes:

– discussions of multiple temporalities related to algorithmic 
technologies and the governance regimes of which they are a part of

– grassroots and top-down imaginaries of futures as they pertain to the 
(mis)use of algorithms

– historical accounts exploring interconnections between time and 
algorithmic technologies

– political-economic accounts of temporal regimes associated with 
algorithmic technologies

– decolonial computation and decolonization of algorithms

– creative and speculative approaches seeking to address the issues of 
algorithmic futures

Please, send your abstracts (250-500 words) and a short bio to the 
following email: (blackboxedfutures /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(blackboxedfutures /at/ gmail.com)> no later than February 20. The 
results of the selection process will be published on March 1.

Postgraduate Symposium, Critical Media Studies, HSE, Moscow

Dmitry Muravyov, Artyom Kolganov, Aleksey Pereyaslov, Elizaveta Panina, 
Yujie Chi

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