STS Austria Workshop 'Digital Living, Digital Infrastructuring'.

Science and Technology Studies has repeatedly shown that the social, cultural, technological and political conditions of research, knowledge production and innovation processes are being re-shaped through the digitization of data, the virtualization of communication and collaboration, and the design of underlying infrastructures. The COVID-19 pandemic has, however, drawn new attention to the role of digital infrastructures in private and public life. Politics, work, education, research, and everyday life now rely on virtual spaces and digital online platforms. The increased visibility of our dependence on digital infrastructures has made it clear that access to and control of such infrastructures are unequally distributed, both within Austrian society and internationally. While these infrastructures both contribute to new forms of social change and stabilize existing social relations, they invoke changing forms of individual and collective agency through invitations to participate, collaborate, trade, rate, comment, and share. Yet due to the private nature of digital infrastructures available to the general public, they largely remain outside of democratic control.