Sebastian Gießmann

Sebastian Gießmann

@sebgiessmann.bsky.social

Media History | Theory | STS @Siegen Media & Culture @unicologne.bsky.social Das Kreditkarten-Buch: Geschichte und Theorie des digitalen Bezahlens 👉️ https://www.kulturverlag-kadmos.de/programm/details/das_kreditkarten-buch

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Heute!

Sebastian Gießmann@sebgiessmann.bsky.social

Wie erzieht man einen Chatbot? Am 27. Oktober spreche ich über »Schritte zu einer Infrastruktur von Ökologie«. Es geht um das Verhältnis von Infrastrukturen und KI als neuer Umgebung unserer Medienpraxis. Freue mich auf den Vortrag an der @unimainz.bsky.social! 👉️ netzeundnetzwerke.de/schritte-zu-...

📚 Out now: my review of David W. Bates' astonishing book “An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence: Thinking with Machines from Descartes to the Digital Age.“ An account not to be missed if you are interested in #AI and its twisted histories! 👉 doi.org/10.1353/tech... #booksky #history #histsci

In der Tat ein sehr lesenswerter Artikel!

Monika Dommann@modomodo.bsky.social

Der in Deutschland lebende Avner Ofrath gehört zu den nachdenklichen und spannenden Stimmen zur historischen Analyse des Israel-Palästina-Komplexes. Auch der neue Text zu den Wahlen in Israel ist sehr lesenswert. Nicht wegclicken. Lesen!

Remember this summer? #heat #media #ecology

Centre for Digital Cultures@cdcleuphana.bsky.social

We cordially invite you to our symposium, “Climate Sensitivities: Aesthetics and Politics of Heat,” which will take place on October 29 and 30, 2026, in Room 501 of the Libeskind Building. The programme and abstracts can be found here: www.leuphana.de/en/research-...

This is an exciting call for participation: Critical AI Studies of „latent space“ is what we really need!

Alex Campolo@alexcampolo.bsky.social

Excited to announce the inaugural @leverhulmecal.bsky.social conference - "Latent spaces: probing, interpreting, situating," chaired by @amoorelouise.bsky.social and @emilieksunde.bsky.social. Submissions are due towards the end of November. Call: leverhulmecal.webspace.durham.ac.uk/lcal-confere...

💳 Barbara Brandls tolles Buch ist der finanzsoziologische Zwilling meines Kreditkarten-Buchs ... Ein sehr schönes double feature, wie ich finde! Bei mir liegt es schon auf dem Schreibtisch. 📚 #digipay #bezahlen #digitalisierung #booksky #ungleichheit #medientheorie #geschichte #soziologie

Philipp Hölzing@philipphoelzing.bsky.social

Nutzung von Kreditkarten oder Apps zur Zahlung ist weltweit mittlerweile ein alltäglicher Vorgang – aber weit mehr als eine rein technische Angelegenheit. Barbara Brandl zeigt in diesem wichtigen Buch, dass digitale Zahlungen erhebliche Auswirkungen auf Dynamiken sozialer Ungleichheit haben. Out!

While Musk is willing to give away shares for free, Anthropic wants to set up a fund with 5-7% of its shares dedicated to the public good. While that sounds better than bribing kids with a share (Musk), it will remind critics of the "effective altruism" ideology for sure. #anthropicstudies

Recently, I got back to more intense writing on paper in my notebooks. It really helps to be creative, on the human side of things. Also, genAI does not get in your way. Who would not prefer a blank page to a prompt?

Louise Amoore@amoorelouise.bsky.social

I love my notebooks. I have them back to May 1996 with no gaps, all analog indexed. My kids roll their eyes from behind their iPads and mutter OneNote under their breath. But if I want to recall what Cynthia Enloe or Judith Butler said in 1997 (& what I thought at the time) I can reach to the shelf

Carolyn Marvin for the win! Besides resisting the Uber robots, she has written one of the most brilliant media historical books. It is aptly called "When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century". Oxford University Press, 1988.

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Wenn Petra Gehring eine Würdigung Michel Foucaults schreibt, ist mir um die gute Wochenendlektüre nicht bange! #foucault100

„Zur Psychoanalyse also eher gestrig, zur Geschlechterfrage top und zum Lesen als Lebensweise – erst noch zu entdecken? Es bleibt eine tückische Angelegenheit mit der Aktualität.“

Wie macht man im Jahr 2026 ein Seminar über, mit, zu Michel #Foucault ? Vermutlich sollte ich die Überlegungen dazu dokumentieren, denn aus einer solchen Überfülle großartiger Texte auszuwählen, ist eine Herausforderung. /1

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#anthropicstudies

Alex Campolo@alexcampolo.bsky.social

Nice reporting. I have to say that what strikes me most is the extreme dilettantism. It's like undergraduate dorm-room stuff, except with NDAs and thirtysomething billionaires... www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/u...

🐄 Just a quick note ... We are so excited about the HISTORIES OF TRACKING conference, which is starting today at Université de Luxembourg! Here's an updated programme 👉 www.uni.lu/c2dh-en/even... #mediastudies #history #STS #surveillance #mediaofcoop @c2dh.uni.lu @valeriesch.bsky.social

uni.luHistories of TrackingSurveillance has become ubiquitous in digital media environments and is now taken for granted. With every PayPal interaction, at the least more than 600

Anthropic's IPO seems to be happening after the Midterms. If agents permit and humanity survives until then ... The numbers on this are staggering. A valuation of $2 trillion would make this to big to fail. Could we pace this frontier? www.reuters.com/business/fin... #anthropicstudies #AI #openAI

reuters.comEXCLUSIVE: Anthropic's IPO prospectus shows sweeping AI vision, surging costsAnthropic is making a massive bet that AI will ​transform the global economy more profoundly than industrialization, electricity and the internet, according to its IPO prospectus seen by Reuters. The ...

Sebastian Gießmann reposted

Amazing news: don't miss this special dossier on urban AI!

Mediapolis Journal @mediapolis.bsky.social

OUT NOW: "The Synthetic City", edited by @scott-rodgers.bsky.social, @aneleh-redenetta.bsky.social, marcospdias.bsky.social, @diogo-ph22.bsky.social and saratrentham.bsky.social, examines the implications of AI for urban living. Read the full dossier here: www.mediapolisjournal.com/dossiers/dos...

Noch bis zum Sonntag an der Frankfurter Schirn: Tim Otto Roths „Vocal Revolutions“. Not to be missed! Für das Foto gilt: The Artist is present. Und die etwas geschrumpfte Ausstellung „The World Through AI“ lohnt sich auch.

Even if I could put 24 hours of my day into research on current #AI developments, I would hardly be fast and comprehensive enough. Here's a new and (un-)expected twist: Microsoft's new frontier AI lab has come up with a Code of Conduct for its project of "Humanist AI". /1

It is a critical answer to Anthropic's Constitution for #Claude. Mustafa Suleyman's text on the subject is well worth a read. And this all adds to the current AI #governance & #alignment controversy ... 👉️ mustafa-suleyman.ai/a-warning-ab... /2 #anthropicstudies

mustafa-suleyman.aiA warning about ‘model welfare’AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. Training a model to believe it might be a moral patient, as Anthropic’s constitution does, makes the alignment and containment challenge...

Eine sehr klare Analyse, lesenswert.

Volkmar Wölk @volkmarwoelk.bsky.social

„Die wirtschaftlichen Liberalisierungen der letzten Jahrzehnte haben die Einkommensungleichheit enorm wachsen lassen. Das ist ein zentraler Treiber für rechte Parteien in vielen westlichen Demokratien.“

Das ist eine sehr gute, differenziert argumentierende Petition, die ich gerne unterschrieben habe. Und das solltet Ihr auch tun!

We need to get rid of AI-written papers completely! It has no place in academic writing unless used for stylistic and grammatic assistance (if needed). Btw, I just spent a day correcting a DeepL translation of a text of mine. It seemed fine at first glance, but meagre once you do a real walkthrough.

Ben Williamson@benpatrickwill.bsky.social

Everyone knows AI-written academic papers are embarrassing now, including their "authors", which is why even the publishers - who stand to benefit most from AI-amplified publication volumes - are now offering "Affordable human expert editing for AI-drafted or AI-edited manuscripts" 🤯

It seems like #Anthropic is going #precrime, pre-IPO. We knew about the company's internal security paranoia, but this feels like a whole new level of cyberpunk megacorp bullshit.

Timnit Gebru@timnitgebru.blacksky.app

Guys but it's the fictional machine god that needs to be regulated and that we should worry about. prospect.org/2026/09/09/a...

💳 Starting very soon -- we'll talk about The Credit Card Book at the @cais-research.bsky.social colloquium in a bit! 📚 #digipay #creditcard #booksky

Center for Advanced Internet Studies@cais-research.bsky.social

You’ll have the opportunity to hear more about this fascinating history from Sebastian Gießmann himself: on Sept 9, 4:00–5:00 PM, at CAIS (Konrad-Zuse-Straße 2a, 44801 Bochum) or online. To join online, please send a short email to Kolleg@cais-research.de. Join us: cais-research.de/en/event/boo...

Wie macht man im Jahr 2026 ein Seminar über, mit, zu Michel #Foucault ? Vermutlich sollte ich die Überlegungen dazu dokumentieren, denn aus einer solchen Überfülle großartiger Texte auszuwählen, ist eine Herausforderung. /1

Auffälligerweise gibt es keinen aktuellen Reader (oder)? Immerhin aber Philipp Sarasins Einführung und einiges Biografisches (Deleuze, Veyne, Eribon). Zudem: Ist Foucault-Kommentar Männersache? Als beste Leserin fällt mir spontan Petra Gehring ein. Könnte ein langer 🧵 werden! /2