The international research consortium which includes the Centre for Critical Technology Studies (CCTS) managed by Assoc. Prof. Michał Krzykawski from the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Silesia will begin to implement the project entitled „Networking Ecologically Smart Territories – NeST” as part of Horizon 2020 project (MSCA – Research and Innovation Staff Exchange). CCTS obtained funding in the amount of EUR 119,600. Ten scientists and doctoral students from the University of Silesia will participate in the programme, which will last three years. The project coordinator is Prof. Noel Fitzpatrick from the Technological University Dublin.
The consortium comprises eleven partners:
- four European research institutions: Technological University Dublin (project leader), Institut de recherche et d’innovation Centre Pompidou, Université Paris Lumières, University of Silesia in Katowice (Centre for Critical Technology Studies),
- two non-European partner universities: Universidad de las Artes de Ecuador, University of California, Berkeley,
- and five non-academic partners: Dublin City Council, Département de la Seine-Saint-Denis, Fabryka Pełna Życia in Dąbrowa Górnicza, Phosphène Disnovation, Consejo de Gobierno de Galápagos.
The theoretical foundations for the project application were to a large extent prepared by the recently deceased French philosopher Bernard Stiegler. The fundamental goal of the project is to examine the following hypothesis: what conditions the possibility of resilience of human societies, and is key to reinvent the contemporary industrial economy, which, in the current technoeconomic model leads to a mass loss of skills (proletarisation) of entire social groups, is digital diversity understood as noodiversity and technodiversity. The project assumes wide-ranging and interdisciplinary research work, which will enable to connect precise and local-specific problems for particular territories with international concerns of the Anthropocene age. The research objectives of the project will be achieved through international and cross-sectoral exchange of researchers and employees of both academic and non-academic institutions involved in the project.
The project will be implemented in the following three areas:
- developing new foundations for theoretical computer science, including the notions of locality, negentropy, anti-entropy and with reference to data economy and artificial intelligence. The project will be a continuation of work dedicated to the criticism of digital technologies undertaken as part of Digital Studies Network, and development of the notions of technodiversity and cosmotechnics;
- carrying out experiments intended to identify new territorial forms of shared responsibility and new forms of civic participation, as well as to promote local participation practice within the framework of co-author research;
- develop a network of territorial research laboratories, whose role is to examine the requirements that local forms of life and ecological niches in a particular territory are subject to. The goal will be to develop the new ways to understand the local uniqueness of forms of life and functional cooperation between territories and researchers in the context of global risk created by broadly understood climate change.
The Centre for Critical Technology Studies (CCTS) is a new interdisciplinary research unit established in 2019 on the initiative of Assoc. Prof. Michał Krzykawski, Professor of the University of Silesia (Institute of Literary Studies, Institute of Philosophy) and Dr Anna Malinowska (Institute of Culture Studies). The purpose of CCTS is to conduct research related to social, political, anthropological, economic, environmental, cultural, ethical, urban and epistemological challenges brought by the development of technologies. Research in CCTS is conducted in the following areas: French tradition of philosophical consideration over technology, philosophy of science and political economy, as well as continental philosophy, cultural studies and media culture studies, with particular focus on posthumanist thought and digital humanities.
