Grounding Digitalization: Technologies, Materialities, and Spaces
Bielefeld: transcript Verlag (2026), 278 pp.
"Digitalization is usually perceived as an invisible process and its cultural embeddedness as well as its material, spatial, and environmental grounding are often neglected. However, digital technologies and transformations are shaped not only by cultural values, practices, and imaginaries, but also by network infrastructures and spatial orders. They consume environmental resources and cause high carbon dioxide emissions and electronic waste. At the same time, these materialities intervene in spaces, thereby reconfiguring socio-spatial arrangements. The contributors to this volume analyze digitalization from a »grounding« perspective that explores involved cultural practices, technologies, materialities, and spaces." (Publisher description)
Introduction / Regula Valérie Burri, Hanna Göbel, and Inga Reimers, 9
INFRASTRUCTURES
Fractured Data Infrastructures: Sociomaterial frictions in the digitalization of Irish planning / Juliette Davret, Danielle Hynes, and Rob Kitchin, 21
Governing with/through Smart Ports: Contested infrastructural spatialities in the port of Hamburg / Sophia Leipert, 39
Critical Dashboarding: On collective design practices of urban infrastructures / Timo Kaerlein, 55
IMAGINARIES
Elsewheres of AI: Global supply chains, data work, and the social counter-imaginaries of autonomous driving / Fabian Namberger, 73
How Digital is the Future of Farming? Grounding policymakers’ visions in small-scale farmers’ speculative designs / Mascha Gugganig, 91
“A Message from our CEO”: Sundar Pichai’s vanguard visions of global AI futures powered by Google / Sebastian Wucherer, 111
Hi, ChatGPT! Images and imaginaries of a large language model / Regula Valérie Burri, 131
TERRITORIES
Shared Mapping as a Spatial Practice of Reterritorialization by Digital Platform Delivery Workers in Brazil / Igor Dalla Vecchia and Boris Michel, 149
Territorializing the Ordinary: Regressive urban futures through TikTok / Zita Seichter, 165
“It is, like any space, full of possibilities”: Interview on spatial contestations and far-right mobilizations in the digital age / Jason Luger, Zita Seichter, and Michael Krell, 185
WORK AND REPAIR
“Is something broken?” Producing and moderating Do-It-Yourself repair advice online / Ronja Trischler, 203
Working (on) Spaces: Repairing rural infrastructures through collaborative working spaces? / Inga Reimers, 219
Hands for AI: Programming in Machine Learning as labor, work, and action / Johanna Fischer, 237
Access Work in Disability Communities: A pre-enactment of repairing data intensive environments / Hanna Göbel, 255
INFRASTRUCTURES
Fractured Data Infrastructures: Sociomaterial frictions in the digitalization of Irish planning / Juliette Davret, Danielle Hynes, and Rob Kitchin, 21
Governing with/through Smart Ports: Contested infrastructural spatialities in the port of Hamburg / Sophia Leipert, 39
Critical Dashboarding: On collective design practices of urban infrastructures / Timo Kaerlein, 55
IMAGINARIES
Elsewheres of AI: Global supply chains, data work, and the social counter-imaginaries of autonomous driving / Fabian Namberger, 73
How Digital is the Future of Farming? Grounding policymakers’ visions in small-scale farmers’ speculative designs / Mascha Gugganig, 91
“A Message from our CEO”: Sundar Pichai’s vanguard visions of global AI futures powered by Google / Sebastian Wucherer, 111
Hi, ChatGPT! Images and imaginaries of a large language model / Regula Valérie Burri, 131
TERRITORIES
Shared Mapping as a Spatial Practice of Reterritorialization by Digital Platform Delivery Workers in Brazil / Igor Dalla Vecchia and Boris Michel, 149
Territorializing the Ordinary: Regressive urban futures through TikTok / Zita Seichter, 165
“It is, like any space, full of possibilities”: Interview on spatial contestations and far-right mobilizations in the digital age / Jason Luger, Zita Seichter, and Michael Krell, 185
WORK AND REPAIR
“Is something broken?” Producing and moderating Do-It-Yourself repair advice online / Ronja Trischler, 203
Working (on) Spaces: Repairing rural infrastructures through collaborative working spaces? / Inga Reimers, 219
Hands for AI: Programming in Machine Learning as labor, work, and action / Johanna Fischer, 237
Access Work in Disability Communities: A pre-enactment of repairing data intensive environments / Hanna Göbel, 255
