About this site

We take a critical approach to our website, recognising the socio-technical and contentious aspects of computing.

• We consider the material basis of digital technologies, including the environmental harms and exploitative extractivism around web technologies
• We recognise the negatives of big tech, including market domination and surveillance capitalism
• We are conscious of the social justice issues and ongoing colonisation around computing

Our practical specifications for our website include:

• Efficient infrastructure provision and ease of maintenance
• Dynamic features as well as static information serving
• Consideration of integration with Open University organisation and governance structures

We have opted to use Open University provided website provision at the current time, recognising there are difficult trade-offs in the above considerations. We are also conscious of the trade-offs where we use proprietary platforms such as social media.

Some suggested reading

• Ali, S. M. (2016) ‘A brief introduction to decolonial computing’, XRDS 22, 4, pp. 16–21. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/2930886 | http://oro.open.ac.uk/46718/ 
• Corrigan, R. (2006) ‘The Second Law and Rivalrous Digital Information (Or Maxwell’s Demon in an Information Age)’, World Economics, 6(3) pp. 153–174. Available at: http://oro.open.ac.uk/10327/1/2nd_law_GIKII_talk.pdf
• Ortiz Freuler, J. (2022) ‘The weaponization of private corporate infrastructure: Internet fragmentation and coercive diplomacy in the 21st century’, Global Media and China 0(0). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/20594364221139729 
• Rosol, C., Steininger, B., Renn, J. and Schlögl, R. (2018) ‘On the Age of Computation in the Epoch of Humankind’, Nature Outlook, 563 (7733), pp.1-5. Available at: https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_3009962/component/file_3016570/content 
• Monserrate, S. G. (2022) ‘The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage’, MIT Case Studies in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing, Winter 2022. https://doi.org/10.21428/2c646de5.031d4553