Environmental Humanities Center Amsterdam

Dr. Anne Pasek is an interdisciplinary researcher working at the intersections of climate communication, the environmental humanities, and science and technology studies. She studies how carbon becomes communicable in different communities and media forms, to different political and material effects.

She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies and the School of the Environment at Trent University, as well as the Canada Research Chair in Media, Culture and the Environment.

This EHC lunch lecture will survey two trajectories for computing in the Global North. The first, grounded in an energy history of major players in the tech sector, explores how energy efficiency has been both a driving economic force of our digital present and an insufficient means to mitigate its rapidly growing environmental impacts. The second, drawn from artists and hackers experimenting in degrowth computing, ‘small tech,’ and solar-powered networks, explores how energy constraints are producing an alternative and dissonant path. Thinking these trajectories together, the talk will outline a politics and practice of digital energetics.

This lunch lecture is organized by the Environmental Humanities Center Amsterdam in collaboration with the VU’s Chair in Media and Culture and the University of Utrecht’s Special Interest Group Greening the Digital Society.

This on-site event is free of charge and open to the public.