Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) might as well have been our new media of monetary cooperation. And they still can be, at the least in the case of the Digital Euro. Since 2023, I have repeatedly advocated for real digital cash, financial inclusion and new public payment infrastructure for all of Europe. While we, finally, expect a political decision by the European Parliament in July, the D€ is facing competition from WERO, a pan-European PayPal competitor. Geopolitical claims for monetary sovereignty mix with twisted hopes for digital sovereignty and independence. So what can MoneyLab do next? The Austrians of Ja, Panik might have known it early on: Dance the ECB, swing die Staatsfinanzen … sing ihnen ihre Melodien, zwing sie zum Tanzen.
Die Einführungsvorlesung schlägt mittels Anthropic Studies eine situierte Auseinandersetzung mit der aktuellen, neo-konnektistischen künstlichen Intelligenz vor. Sie wählt hierfür eine symmetrische Perspektive, die sowohl medien- und kulturwissenschaftlich wie im Sinne der Science and Technology Studies vorgeht. Als theoretischer Fixpunkt kommen hierbei die Arbeiten von Susan Leigh Star und Phil Agre ins Spiel. Ist „KI“ nicht das vieldeutigste Grenzobjekt, das die Informatik je hervorgebracht hat? Wenn wir in der aktuellen Superkontroverse um KI und ihre planetarischen Folgen bestehen wollen, müssen wir die Technologie zunächst in ihren institutionellen Ökologien und Grammatiken des Handels lokalisieren. Es tritt auf die Szene: Claude, der Chatbot von Anthropic. Das Prompt des Vortrags lautet: „Erzähl uns ein wenig über Deine Verfassung, Claude.“
10. Juni 2026, 16 Uhr s.t. Universität zu Köln
Philosophische Fakultät
Seminargebäude (106), 1. Etage, Raum S11
Universitätsstr. 37, 50931 Köln
Karen Hao’s excellent investigative book, Empire of AI, published in 2025, reads at times like an account that Bruno Latour could have written himself. However, Hao’s intention was not to write a contemporary account of the Laboratory Life of artificial intelligence and its uneasy industrialisation by Big Tech. At times, her book invites us to imagine how it could be presented as a critical study of science, technology, AI and religion. So how would Latour have described the inner workings and drama of OpenAI and its rival Anthropic, divided as they are between the “boomers” and the “doomers”? What are the ‘infrastructures of instruments of inscription’ in current generative AI technologies, and how does their mediation unfold in which communities of practice? Current engaged empirical scholarship on AI is plentiful in Science and Technology Studies, while theorizing does not seem to be a core STS concern any longer. Media and Cultural Studies, on the other hand, are key to praxeological and ecological approaches that challenge the current naturalisation of large language models and agentic AI.
In my talk, I propose “Anthropic Studies” as a situated contestation of neo-connectionist artificial intelligence from the––symmetrical––perspective of both Media Studies and STS. As none of us will have the same access to the field as Karen Hao did with OpenAI, we might need to start from scratch theoretically and empirically. Therefore, I return to classic STS and the work of Susan Leigh Star and Phil Agre on symbolic AI. Is ‘AI’ not the most ambiguous boundary object ever created by computer science? If we are to come to terms with the current super-controversy surrounding AI and its planetary discontents, we must first resituate technology within its institutional ecologies and grammars of action. Enter: Anthropic’s Claude (not Shannon). Prompt: “Tell me a little bit about your constitution, Claude.”
Digital unabhängig, monetär souverän und technisch auf dem allerneuesten Stand: Europa braucht neue kooperative Infrastrukturen des Geldes. Wir diskutieren mit Euch, was wir als Zivilgesellschaft anhand der aktuellen politischen Bedingungen tun und fordern müssen.
Nach dem Angriffskrieg auf die Ukraine zeigt es das offen hegemoniale Vorgehen der US-Regierung: Die aktuellen geopolitischen und ökonomischen Entwicklungen erfordern die europäische Unabhängigkeit digitaler Zahlungsinfrastrukturen. Ob Europa den digitalen Euro will, ist nicht mehr die einzige Frage. Sondern: Wie kann überhaupt das Halten und Bewegen von Geld hinreichend autonom, sicher und bürgernah ausgestaltet werden? Löst der digitale Euro – für den inzwischen erste Industrieaufträge vergeben wurden – das Problem fehlender monetärer Souveränität?
Die Philosophin Petra Gehring und der Medientheoretiker Sebastian Gießmann treten seit Jahren für eine bürgernahe Ausgestaltung digitaler Zentralbankwährungen ein. Nun lenken sie den Blick auf die Unabhängigkeitsfrage und diskutieren mit Euch, wie Forderungen an den digitalen Umbau der Finanzwelt real werden – angesichts der geopolitischen Lage Stand heute.
I am still wondering how to grapple with the relation of infrastructures and environments in media theory. Praxeology and media ecology do not convergence easily––even if media practices are infrastructural and environmentally situated at the same time. Here’s a first take on the subject, a Berlin keynote lecture that has now become an elegantly edited microform podcast. My gratitude goes to the members of the DFG research training group “Literatur- und Wissensgeschichte kleiner Formen” at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and especially Johann Gartlinger and Marie van Bömmel for the smooth editing and moderation.
“Infrastructures and/as Environments: Practices and Ecologies of Circulation”. Lecture by Sebastian Gießmann, in: microform. Der Podcast des Graduiertenkollegs Literatur- und Wissensgeschichte kleiner Formen, available at: www.kleine-formen.de/infrastructures-and-as-environments, Berlin 2026 [March 26, 2026].
Am 20. März lese ich um 12 Uhr auf der Leipziger Buchmesse aus meinem frisch publizierten Kreditkarten-Buch. Es geht um Karten, die nach Osten wandern. Und um Krieg, Frieden und digitales Bezahlen. Moderiert von Wolfram Burckhardt, dem Leiter des famosen Kulturverlags Kadmos. Schaut auf der Indie-Bühne (Halle 5, G200) vorbei und unterstützt unabhängige Verlage und Buchhandlungen!
Am 17. Oktober lese ich um 13 Uhr auf der Frankfurter Buchmesse aus meinem kommenden Kreditkarten-Buch. Moderiert von Wolfram Burckhardt, dem Leiter des famosen Kulturverlags Kadmos. Mit großem Dank an die Kurt-Wolff-Stiftung für ihre LESEINSEL der unabhängigen Verlage. Support your independent book publishers and sellers! Wer nicht vor Ort sein konnte, kann gerne die Aufzeichnung auf YouTube anschauen.
Hier klicken, um den Inhalt von www.youtube-nocookie.com anzuzeigen.
What is the truth about the network? And what might it tell us in our current situation? After five years of translation and fine-grained updating, Sebastian Giessmann’s seminal book on The Connectivity of Things: Network Cultures since 1832 finally came out in October 2024 with MIT Press. The full text is available in open access.
While the translated book’s historical narrative is deeply rooted in developments of 19th and 20th century infrastructural history, it is also a key work of German media theory. There’s much to discuss here for historians of technology, be it the notion of “cultural techniques,” the seemingly Western grounding of network practice and thought, and the in/visible work of networking in material cultures itself.
Connectivity is a book full of in-depth case studies that deserve a closer look, be it the relation between networks and colonial power in the case of French Saint-Simonianism, be it the early history of the telephone network, visual histories of network diagrams, the mobilities of the London Tube Map, Western and Eastern styles of logistics, and the unlikely inception of the ARPANET. It might be said that networks are a core cultural technique to allow for the migration of people, signs, and objects, which includes their disconnection. Connectivity of Things finally gives us a history that actor-network theory never dared to write itself.
We invite everyone at SHOT in Luxembourg to join the discussion, both in person and per hybrid participation. Our author-meets-critics session will combine key critical questions towards the book, and shall provide insights into the intricacies of such an (un-)timely and complex translation endeavor.
On The Connectivity of Things: Network Cultures since 1832
Author-meets-critics: Sebastian Giessmann (Siegen), Monika Dommann (Zurich), Cyrus Mody (Maastricht), Elizabeth Petrick (Rice), and Thomas Haigh (Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
Both as imaginary and material network technologies, blockchain and ‘artificial intelligence’ tend to clash and mingle at the same time. Current neoconnectionist AI and blockchains follow very different cultural logics, just as neural networks differ from peer-to-peer networks sociotechnically. Maximum data intensity, large language models, tokenized media objects, modification of algorithms by data, operational statistics, plus the variation of existing patterns in the case of AI – data immutability, encryption, token economies and exact processing of algorithmic instructions in the case of blockchain. Together, blockchain and neoconnectionist AI are about to form what I call a seventh historical layer within my work on “The Connectivity of Things” in network cultures.
Yet, at the same time, blockchain and AI not only compete for parallel distributed processing power in data centers. They both share energy-intensive, extractive strategies that drive the booms and busts of too-late capitalism (Anna Kornbluh). While their network imaginaries are still being contested, naturalization and habitualization happen at an ever increasing pace. Sometimes, blockchain is now promoted as a slowing-down counter-infrastructure to AI’s accelerationist, generative media and its models. The paper is going to take a close look at controversial cases like Worldcoin, which is supposed to afford for a biometrical “proof-of-human” that attaches a digital identity to online content. While the cultural logics of blockchain and AI might seem to differ almost entirely on the infrastructural level, they are currently serving as a match made in hell when it comes to their political and economical appropriation.
[This is my contribution to the 4S open panel Network Imaginaries: Past, Present, and Future on September 4, 2025.]
… those digital pioneers that marked and
started to quantify the pulse of online activity?
… the novelty of seeing website visits
measured in real-time?
… eye-catching graphics becoming the currency of online attention?
… the early days of companies like
Webtrends, Urchin and DoubleClick?
The full RESAW 2025 program can be viewed on our conference website. Take a look at our exciting sessions and keynotes and enjoy your visit to RESAW 2025 at Siegen University’s own Media of Cooperation! You might also want to watch out for the hashtag #RESAW25 on Mastodon and elsewhere.
