Laser

@stefanlaser

I am an academic ✒ on 🚯🚆🐮💾. #sts #sociology #ecology #waste #energy Plus, Fujifilm #photography I post POSSE style: Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. Many things Asia, VN.

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Laser@stefanlaser· 8d

Massen beim #CSD in Magdeburg, lokal und angereist. Nice Stimmung. Arguably einer der wichtigsten Züge der aktuellen Zeit. Polizeipräsenz – wie selten gesehen

Foto vom Hasselbachplatz in Magdeburg, ein Ausschnitt des Demozugs, hunderte Menschen auf einen Platz. Altbauten im Hintergrund, ein blauer Himmel

Laser@stefanlaser· Jul 23

#Germany to buy direct stakes in #military tech startups. Offering ever more support for companies, the most questionable ones, while pressuring workers and holding back infrastructure investments. This policy #reform we are living though will work wonders, sure. Writing this while train-stranded

Photo form an FT.com article, with the last paragraph paraphrasing industry exports that partly don't like these semi-direct state investment; they would rather just have the orders, which is an astounding statement on its own

Laser@stefanlaser· Jul 16

Ich habe die Ringvorlesung Nachhaltigkeit an der #RUB besucht, Konsum und Digitalisierung mein Thema. Mit Blick auf die fossile Moderne, #Extraktivismus und #Elektroschrott habe ich einen Move gemacht: weg von individueller, hin zu industrieller Verantwortung & kollektivem Konsum. Students on🔥

Die Titelfolie des Talks mit Kunst von betterimagesofai.com. Ein Esel zieht einen Karren voller (alter) elektronischer Geräte. Im Hintergrund, alles außer die Devices sind in Sepia gehalten, ist ein Großplakat mit Silas Green Show als Titel zu sehen. Digitale Technologie ist viel Show um wenig Fortschritt.

Laser@stefanlaser· Jul 2

Exploring the biggest construction site in Europe: ESMC Dresden, a Taiwanese-German #chip joint venture. More water diverted? There’s enough for all, we learn. More housing? That’s for the market to tackle. Energy needs? Complex. Workers on site? Many from eastern Europe. Fascinating

Lots of cranes from the distance, merging with the meadows, which is part of a compensation measure built 25 years ago when AMD (now GloFo) arrived in Dresden. This works surprisingly well

Entry sign in front of the #semiconductor fab construction, explaining the funding in goals

Laser@stefanlaser· Jun 27

Die Robotron-Kantine in #Dresden: offene Räume start Abriss. Einst Informationstechnologie, dann Klub, dann lange nuischt. Die heutige Kunstausstellung offenbart, wie die ostdeutsche Gesellschaft immer schon Alternativen gedacht hat

Unterschiedliche Zeichnungen von Fäusten vor einer Holzwand, Teil der Ausstellung über die Kunstausstellungen der DDR

Eine S/W-Fotographie der Robotron-Kantine aus dem Jahr 1979, schief fotografiert. Ein rechteckiges einstöckiges Gebäude auf Podest

Blick innen auf unterschiedliche Kunstwerke

Laser@stefanlaser· Jun 26

Back with the Taiwanese colleagues to explore the #semiconductor industry, now in #Dresden. We started with vanished #chip histories, moved to promised silicon futures and will now venture out – a lovely explorative “walkshop.” I opened with a talk on lost futures in Magdeburg (#Intel).

A snapshot from an 1980s Robotron machine from the Technische Sammlung Dresden, where we started. It's a grey picture of a grey machine, excitingly boring

Snapshot of the German and Taiwan flags that reside in the middle of a table, snacks nearby

A mural form the city centre that we discussed before our first dinner, a rather controversial large art work that (in GDR times) was introduced for the occasion of the GDR's 20th anniversary; a red flag connecting the 1848 social uprisings in Germany (and Marx/Engels at its heart) with developments merging into and serving socialist propaganda

Laser@stefanlaser· Jun 24

Die #Bahn stoppt, weil der Zugfunk ausfällt. Zuletzt hat ein Vortrag beim CCC genau davor gewarnt. GSM ist nicht ganz die random person aus Nebraska (xkcd), aber es ist eine infrastrukturelle Abhängigkeit, die dank Unterfinanzierung der #DB links liegen bleibt. Heise: www.heise.de/news/37C3…

Der berühmte "Dependency"-Comic von xkcd, der Großinfrastruktur als instabiles Gebilde dargestellt, abhängig im Fundament von einer kleinen Maintenance-Aufgabe. Hier ist der Originaltext des Memes ersetzt durch (oben) "a train bringing you home at night" und (unten rechts) "GSM-R"

Laser@stefanlaser· Jun 12

Our #waste in motion research workshop in Bochum is finished, and I’m ready for the weekend after organizing this humble gathering. 1 digital humanities workshop, 2 post-mining excursions, 3 international guests, and relentless fun and appreciation. Waste lives on. Stay tuned. But for now, 😴

As part of one excursion, we embarked on our own sensing experience. Here, looking for industrial pollution that is the hidden backdrop of a nature reserve. You see soil samples and a paper protocol

Waiting in front of the German Mining Museum in Bochum is one part of our workshop crowd, the iconic ⛏️ tower in the backy it's sunny. We jumped into various cars soon after

Laser@stefanlaser· Jun 11

Listen to in-depth investigation into the growing industry of green technologies and the environmental, social, and political consequences of the mining it requires. – Join us today, 6pm, at the German Mining Museum. Or ... https://stefanlaser.net/2026/06/11/listen-to-indepth-investigation-into.html

Post advertising for Thea's talk on Extraction.

Laser@stefanlaser· Jun 10

It’s waste week. As part of the campus mining walk I did during our DFG waste network meeting, we had a super lucky surprise meetup with a Fraunhofer project: next to the uni #datacenter, they are drilling into an abandoned mine to st... https://stefanlaser.net/2026/06/10/its-waste-week-as-part.html

This is a special drill going underground, searching for an old mine where excess heat is to be stored. A century ago. was used for coal mining, and the Nazis also used it for doing secret engineering work. Now, it's getting a third life as a renewable energy facility

Laser@stefanlaser· Jun 2

Happy to share that my article is live: enjoy some #semiconductor industry dynamics in #Vietnam and #Taiwan. I draw on ethnographic fieldwork at industry fairs in Taipei and Hanoi to make sense of a global frenzy. Follow me on a trip. #STS #Sociology www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/…

One of the images used in the article, a snapshot from the Taipei industry fair where a journalist showed me an image of the (now former) chairman of TSMC, the star of the industry, that was just rushed through the venue.

Laser@stefanlaser· May 30

Farmers in Hung Yen #Vietnam received land as compensation for family members killed in the American war. #Trump parachutes in to build a golf course on these very premises. First act: clearing graves. Better comply, or tariffs are to hit. Graves, ffs., great-grantparents resting since 1967, dnd.

Photo from a FT.com article "Vietnam digs up its dead and relocate remains to clear site for Trump golf course". That's a revealing piece, with a snapshot of graves marked for demolition

Laser@stefanlaser· May 21

Pendelzeit ist Lounge-Zeit, Verspätung rocks (actually nice, ngl). #DB Tageszeitung aufblättern. FAZ so, #KI und Drohnen, da geht mehr. “Zu viel KI-Skepsis können wir uns nicht leisten.” Wirtschaftliches Potenzial! Aber “das humanitäre Völkerrecht gilt”, klar. Eine Schweindebatte

Laser@stefanlaser· May 11

The dirty chunks are back, baby: “Global coal imports in May are expected to be more than 464,000 tonnes, the third highest monthly coal imports on record.” FT.com Well, #coal has never been in decline. We have never had a #transition. archive.is/202605110…

Cover image of an article of the Financial times: Coal shipments jumps as countries seek alternatives to disrupted gas supplies. A digger below

Impressive graph by Our World in Data on the growth of absolute energy production (corrected for inefficiencies even), showing that's it's always and only been up and up for everything. This has also been stressed by Fressoz in the book "More and more and more". Even the production and consumption of wood has never vanished

Laser@stefanlaser· May 11

Die #RUB ist ein kurioser Fall: seit Jahrzehnten wird der Campus komplett renoviert, radikal: PCB-belastete Gebäude werden abgerissen und neu gebaut. Milliarden. Anfang der 2000er sollte die Uni stillgelegt werden. Das wurde gestoppt – weil die RUB überraschend gut im Exzellenzverfahren abschnitt 🙄

Bild von einer RUB-Baustelle, auf der übrigens auch Kohle aus einem Flöz gefunden wurde

Laser@stefanlaser· Apr 30

Join us TODAY for a fly book launch. “Staying with the Planet” is a sci-fi story about ecological troubles of our modern universities. ⏰ 2pm CET 📍 RUSTlab RUB, or Zoom: tinyurl.com/RUSTlab 👇Find more info about the event and book (open access, y’all!) on the RUSTlab website.

Two example pages from our book "Staying with the Planet", p. 94 and 95, in which we draw on Solastagia to think about old hardware and how a data centre engineer misses legacy infrastructure. It is a longer text on the right, with actual interview insights, and a drawing on the left that features a person hugging an old C64, a commodore PC. Above, it reads "We have swapped our quantum computer for a good old model." Drawing by graphicrecording.cool

Laser@stefanlaser· Apr 22

We will party-discuss our book, an intervention into how academia operates (and extracts). This is open access via transcript btw. www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-7...

Laser@stefanlaser· Apr 20

“Es wächst also alles gemeinsam und gleichzeitig. Holz, Öl und Kohle stehen nicht in Konkurrenz zueinander.” Eine Symbiose, die sich mit Erneuerbaren fortsetzt. Jean-Baptiste Fressoz (“More and More and More”, 2025) im Surplus Magazin: gegen ein Denken in Anteilen. #Energiewende

Foto auf einem Holztisch: eine Seite des Surplus-Magazins mit Windkraftanlagen abgebildet neben fossiler Infrastruktur. Titel: Der Ausbau von Wind- und Solarenergie ist keine echte Energiewende". Provokant

Laser@stefanlaser· Apr 8

Sowjetische #sf, “fremd und vertraut”. #KI Und ein Cover Game erster Güte. Funde aus dem Buchladen Peter Sodans, einer Magdeburger Institution

Stanislaw Lems Unbesiegbare und eine Anthologie zum Elektronischen Glück, zwei Bücherfunde mit bunten Covern auf einem Holztisch

Laser@stefanlaser· Apr 4

Oh the Americans want to increase their war budget by a few bucks, just a mere increase of ~40 percent. Germany also proudly moved to the top 5 of #military spenders worldwide. But money’s scarce y’all. Can we have a moonshot beyond virtually shooting at the moon or burying souls for #AI assets?

Snapshot of New York times article titled "White House Seeks 1.5Trillion for Defense in New Budget Request". It also calls out dubious waste somewhere else, of course, devaluing all things non-gold real estate

Laser@stefanlaser· Mar 30

Hey cool, flowers to myself: Starting this week, I will be Acting Professor at Ruhr-University #Bochum holding the chair of Anthropology of Knowledge. This will be for the summer term and lots of fun, esp. in teaching controversy mapping, reading extraction, and discussing post-socialist economies.

A bouquet of flowers we used for last weeks #STS conference in Bochum, nice colours representing spring 🌱

Laser@stefanlaser· Mar 28

Our #STS #Bochum conference is over. The experimental case format has been a success with overwhelming enthusiasm, standing before ruins proved to be an insightful lens; but my body is also weak and tired. Happy Weekend. 🧘 stsing.org/before-ru…

Our team of organizers and student assistants on stage waving a good bye. 18 people in a lecture hall, the photo is shot from the seating area.

Laser@stefanlaser· Mar 25

And we’re on! Welcome address done, and Anne Pasek kicks us off with a keynote on a world after the #AI bubble. @aepa @Aepasek @scholar.social 🏆 How to give justice to the material troubles that arise once data center infrastructure moves on? What do our fears & desires do? We are given zines!!

Keynote photo of Anne. A woman presenting standing next to a computer screen, the slides and a green chalkboard behind

Welcome address by Estrid. A woman with arms spread out standing before a green chalk board

A screenshot of a slideshow with the key arguments of Anne's talk, something to be published later

Laser@stefanlaser· Mar 23

On Wednesday, our #stsing conference in #Bochum starts. Final prep walk done. Standing #BeforeRuins. #sts Check our lovely booklet here: stsing.org/before-ru…

Snapshot of a concrete wall close to our upcoming registration desk

In the way to the lecture hall, there is yellow joy

Laser@stefanlaser· Mar 21

#Buchmesse 🫠

Laser@stefanlaser· Feb 21

😅 #7 at first try Asking for random numbers, password even, with #AI is ludicrous.

Mobile ChatGPT window where I asked for a random number between 0 and 10 (with poor grammar, as proof of me being lazy for the first try, but hey, it worked). That's what the linked post shows: "random" equals 7 most of the time

Laser@stefanlaser· Jan 31

Grit Lemke fängt in “Kinder von Hoy” den Vibe von Hoyerswerda ein: Menschen eingespannt zwischen Glück und Terror. Oder: “Zukünfte, die vorzeitig abgebrochen werden”. Mehr als nebenbei korrigiert sie dutzende Missverständnisse, vom Osten bis nach Mosambik. #Buchempfehlung

Cover des Buchs, ein schwarz weiß Shot eines Kindes, das inmitten von Neubauten über Pfützen springt. Der Titel in Gelb und Lila

Laser@stefanlaser· Jan 29

Deploying and prompting #Claude by #Anthropic means ripping apart literal books. Strange, strange world "Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world." An exclusive WaPo post: archive.is/9hDYR

Laser@stefanlaser· Jan 25

Worrying #airpollution in #Germany, our city of Magdeburg embraces the reds. Praise to our old tech (the wrong kind): from coal to diesel to wooden heating. A bit of winter staleness and it’s all revealed #Luftverschmutzung bsky.app/profile/u…

Screenshot Umweltbundesamt: lots of "very bad" air in central Germany, lots of bad air around and only some mediocre one in the south

Laser@stefanlaser· Dec 23

Closing #Taiwain w/ a run in the mountains, Jazz and food. 👏 #photography And now, an 18hrs flight later, I’m back in Germany.