UCL STS Seminar series: Autonomy as connection: some reflections on open worlds

Autonomy as connection: some reflections on open worlds  

Abstract
This talk traces some throughlines that tether projects in machine autonomy in domestic streetscapes and in foreign battlespaces. Writing against a conception of autonomy as an intrinsic capacity, Tennant and Stilgoe (2021) emphasise the attachments on which selfdirected agency depends. Within the technopolitical imaginaries of autonomous technology, those dependencies are treated variously as relations to be severed or as cybernetic circuits to be controlled through systems engineering. In the case of US militarism, preoccupations with (dis)connection dominate initiatives in the automation of command and control. I examine the continuing logics of this closedworld imaginary in the face of irremediable openness, and the possibilities that the latter affords for thinking autonomy otherwise. 

This event will be hosted online!