Humanities Job Talk

Recent years have seen an increased interest amongst historians, social scientists, and computer scientists in confronting the social and political dimensions of algorithmic and automated decision systems. New interdisciplinary fields of study have emerged to engage these questions under the growing governing powers of artificial intelligence and big data. A notable absence in these discourses is understanding the relationship between the digital world, the environment, and the climate crisis.

In this talk, I will present the prospects and some of the challenges in bridging histories of algorithmic computing with histories of water and the environment. I will address the significance and urgency of this nexus and share my findings on the rise of algorithmic water management in the southwestern United States and its impact on Native American water rights.

My broader research in water and computing shows that algorithmic and automated decision systems are webbed to local policy contexts and legal apparatus as well as to specific data production systems, each of which hold their own complex histories and political meanings. By situating our histories of algorithmic technologies and decision systems in their local contexts, we can see their function beyond a technological field of study, as a powerful and expanding mode of environmental governance.