Search Results for: scale

A Promise of Safety for Everyone, Anywhere, Any Time: The Panic Button, The City, and the Box

William F Stafford Jr February 24, 2026
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By the time panic buttons were installed in buses, taxis, and autorickshaws starting in 2012, their deployment in Delhi’s public transit vehicles had already been under discussion for some time. Policymakers and engineers had considered them as one among many measures available to address anxieties that movement through the public spaces of the city by these means was inherently and increasingly fraught with danger. In the case of autorickshaws, panic buttons where integrated directly into their fare meters as part of a new meter format introduced in 2012 – the Integrated Electronic Fare Meter (IEFM) – which sought to address broader suspicions about the commercial honesty and social morality of autorickshaw operators. The IEFM incorporated GPS receivers and SIM cards which allowed for the identification and transmission of locational data, with each IEFM linked to a centrally administered software platform to track and monitor each vehicle. (read more...)

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Transnational Translations: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue on Platforms and Labor

Malcolm Katrak, Anushree Gupta, Debopriya Shome February 18, 2026
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This article is the third in a series about gig and platform worker unions in India written by members of the Labor Tech Research Network. Read the introduction to the series here, and the second post in the series here. As the landscape of technology-mediated work has evolved rapidly over the years, spanning across diverse geographical contexts, a wide range of academic disciplines, knowledges, and expertise have become relevant for engaging with the technopolitics surrounding it. The multidimensional and dynamic expansion of digital platforms into yet newer industries and sectors, through the use of novel technological and institutional forms, has made interdisciplinary approaches for the critical study of technology and society indispensable for grounding technological innovation in contextual realities. Moreover, intricately entangled global supply chains in the age of hyper-financialized technocapitalism restage labor politics as industry and work are restructured.  (read more...)

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Touch to Make: An Index Finger’s Path into the Sculpture Factories in China

Renee Yu Jin December 12, 2025
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In spring of 2024, when green buds had already begun to appear even though light flurries were still falling in Rochester NY, I was slumped in the folding chair in my apartment, surrounded by dissertation books, the pigment tests, maquettes, and preliminary drawings for an upcoming exhibition in Beijing that October. Ever since I started graduate school, the gentle dilemma of being both an artist and a scholar has colored my days, as a tension that persists but always in the happiest ways. The room was quiet, the light soft, and my attention drifted between thinking, reading, and the pull of artwork I had not yet begun. Almost without intention, my finger moved across my phone, again, returning to the familiar drift of scrolling that has become an ordinary part of contemporary life. I opened Xiaohongshu (Red Note, the Chinese social media App) and typed four characters, sculpture factory (雕塑工厂, diaosugongchang), into the search bar, looking for workshops near Beijing and the adjacent city of Yanjiao in Hebei Province, hoping to locate production sites and people who might help accelerate the work for the exhibition when I returned in the summer. (read more...)

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Renouncing and Returning to Shareholder Value

Sakari Mesimäki November 18, 2025
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As pandemic restrictions began to ease in late 2021, the annual Finnish startup conference Slush made its return as an in-person event. Held for the first time in 2008, Slush grew through the 2010s to become a major international startup event with tens of thousands of attendees—a symbol of the “success story” of Finnish startup culture and a focus of national pride and economic hope. (read more...)

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Space Selfie: Rethinking Scalarity Between Orbit and Home

Denis Sivkov November 6, 2025
Этот материал также доступен на русском
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We are in Ruzaevka, a small town near Saransk, the regional capital of Mordovia, Russia. Ham radio operator Dmitry Pashkov, photographer Sergei Karpov, and I climb the roof of the local technical college. Sergei and I are on the roof because we are interested in so-called bottom-up space exploration. Dmitry works at this college as an IT specialist. It is a cloudy day in March, and there is a cold wind on the roof, still icy from the winter. Dmitry promises to show us how to get an image of the European part of Russia using an American weather satellite. (read more...)

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Космическое селфи: переосмысляя масштабирование между домом и орбитой

Denis Sivkov November 6, 2025
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Мы в Рузаевке – маленьком городе рядом с Саранском – столицей Мордовии, Россия. Радиолюбитель Дмитрий Пашков, фотограф Сергей Карпов и я карабкаемся на крышу местного технического колледжа. Сергей и я на крыше потому, что мы интересуемся так называемым низовым освоением космоса. Дмитрий работает в этом колледже системным администратором. Пасмурный мартовский день, на обледенелой крыше дует холодный ветер. Дмитрий обещал нам показать, как можно поймать изображение европейской части России с американского метеоспутника. (read more...)

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Los Que se Alejan de Internet

Martina Di Tullio October 31, 2025
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En la cosmovisión andina, las constelaciones no se forman uniendo los puntos de luz de las estrellas, sino a partir de las manchas de oscuridad en el cielo. La más importante es la Yakana, que tiene forma de llama, el animal más importante para vivir en los Andes (Zuidema & Urton, 1976). Lo que puede parecer un vacío, entonces, puede revelar tanto o más que la estrella más brillante. (read more...)

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Transplante de Útero: Avanço Científico ou Reflexo de Estereótipos de Gênero?

Juliana Vieira October 27, 2025
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O transplante de útero tem sido apontado como uma das tecnologias reprodutivas mais inovadoras dos últimos anos (Brännström 2018). O procedimento permite que mulheres sem útero possam engravidar e dar à luz a partir de um órgão doado, cuja retirada acontece após o nascimento do bebê em grande parte dos casos (Brännström 2024). Mas, por trás desse avanço, existe também uma discussão sobre os valores e crenças que impulsionam o desenvolvimento dessa tecnologia. Afinal, até que ponto tecnologias médicas consideradas altamente inovadoras, como o transplante de útero, deixam de expressar uma visão progressista de futuro para, em vez disso, reforçar valores moralmente conservadores relacionados à maternidade, ao gênero e à gestação? Será que esta é realmente uma solução para um problema médico ou uma resposta a uma construção social que prioriza a maternidade biológica em detrimento de outras formas de parentalidade? (Luna 2004; Luna 2007). (read more...)

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