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Call for Papers: Software-Sorting the Anthropocene RGS-IBG 2015 Exeter, September 2015 Organizers: Agnieszka Leszczynski, University of Birmingham Jonathan Cinnamon, University of Exeter Matthew W. Wilson, University of Kentucky As per Kathryn Yusoff (2013), we are effecting and experiencing a new social geology that has been designated ‘the Anthropocene.’ Algorithms intersect with and structure emergent forms of algorithmic and data-based life that are always-already premised upon certain kinds of energy/material transformations, be they wind or coal powered, or dependent upon rare earth minerals and associated commodity chains which power the digital devices that we have seamlessly enrolled into the practices and spaces of our everyday lives. At the same time, algorithms serve as new loci for the neoliberal intensification of the technological treadmill whereby we have conveniently shifted the onus of responsibility for anthropogenic environmental change and its solutions, which big data analytics promise to deliver. Algorithms further structure attentional systems through which we might attend to these impacts and intensifications (Kinsley 2014, Wilson 2014). At a moment when questions of the economization of natural-physical systems are invigorated by a ‘critical physical geography’ (Lave et al. 2014), we are curious about the specific software-sorting mechanisms of this epoch. We welcome papers which attend to the ways in which algorithmic assemblages both challenge and reinforce ‘the anthro’ and its attendant social geologies, geographies, and attention economies. While lines of inquiry are open, possible questions for further exploration include: • How do algorithms and data accumulation contribute to anthropogenic environmental change due to the increased inefficiencies and infrastructure and electricity requirements of ‘the cloud’? • How are anthropogenic changes in the environment always-already more than the recent fixation on climate, ice cap melt, global sea level rise, polar vortexes, etc. - a fixation further entrenched by neoliberal intensifications of everyday life through algorithms and big data? • How are new forms of algorithmic governance and governmentality bound up in the securitization of environmental and anthropocentric risk and emergency in the face of natural as well as anthropogenic disasters and emergencies? • What is the nature of the social lives of algorithms in an era of environmental and geopolitical insecurity, and what are the consequences of this for the much critiques anthropocentrism of engagements with ‘the Anthropocene’? • What are the consequences of algorithmic decision-making on human and more-than-human ecologies? What novel insight might big data analysis reveal about the connections between health shocks (e.g. rapid global disease spread in humans and animals) and ecosystem shocks (e.g. temperature rise, species extinction)? We welcome abstracts of no more than 250 words to be submitted to Agnieszka Leszczynski ([log in to unmask]), Jonathan Cinnamon ([log in to unmask]), and Matthew Wilson ([log in to unmask]) by 15 January 2015. References: Kinsley S, 2014, "Memory programmes: the industrial retention of collective life." cultural geographies Forthcoming. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1474474014555658. Lave R, Wilson M W, Barron E S, Biermann C, Carey M A, Duvall C S, Johnson L, Lane K M, McClintock N, Munroe D, Pain R, Proctor J D, Rhoads B L, Robertson M M, Rossi J, Sayre N F, Simon G, Tadaki M, and Van Dyke C, 2014, "Intervention: Critical Physical Geography" The Canadian Geographer 58 1-10 Wilson M W, 2014, "Morgan Freeman is dead and other big data stories." cultural geographies Forthcoming. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1474474014525055. Yusoff K, 2013, "Geologic life: prehistory, climate, futures in the Anthropocene" Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 31 779 – 795 _______________________________________________________ [log in to unmask] An urban geography discussion and announcement forum List Archives: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/URB-GEOG-FORUM Maintained by: RGS-IBG Urban Geography Research Group UGRG Home Page: http://www.urban-geography.org.uk