[Air-L] Expression of interest/Contribution to a thematic issue proposal on "Quantum Ecology" for Big Data & Society

[Stefano Calzati]

Hi, please find below a reminder for the call of interest/contribution to a thematic issue proposal on “Quantum Ecology” for the journal Big Data & Society.

Deadline expression of interest: 15th of August
Deadline submission of abstracts: 1st of September



Proposal Thematic Issue for the journal Big Data & Society

Guest Editors Stefano Calzati, Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Brussels; email: stefanocalzati at hotmail.com<mailto:stefanocalzati at hotmail.com>

Robert Braun, Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna; email: braun at ihs.ac.at<mailto:braun at ihs.ac.at>

Untangling the Quantum Ecology: Charting the Impact of Quantum Theory and Quantum Technologies on Technoscience and the Digital Transformation

At the intersection of Critical Data Studies (CDS), Science and Technology Studies (STS) and societal-oriented readings of quantum theory, this guest issue aims to unpack the tensions of the emergent “quantum ecology” (Calzati & de Kerckhove 2024), intended as both an onto-epistemological framework leveraging key principles and phenomena of quantum physics – e.g., nonlocality, uncertainty, entanglement, discreteness – to make sense of today’s technoscientific condition, as well as a technological paradigm on its own right – pivoting around quantum technologies (QTs)1 – which intersects, builds on, and disrupts the digital transformation, including AI.

Over the last decade, CDS has significantly exposed data’s imbrications with power relations, social (in)justice, and value-laden biases (e.g., Dencik et al. 2016; Eubanks 2018; Hepp et al. 2022; Medrado & Verdegem 2024). At the basis of CDS is the acknowledgement that data, intended as complex “assemblages” (Kitchin & Lauriault 2014), are not neutral or raw but embed, (re)produce, and extend various sociotechnical framings posited on the binary formatting – a proper techno-rationalization – of social and physical reality.

One of the core concerns of STS is to reflect on how specific methods – broadly understood as collective practices of worldmaking – enact representations and/of realities, that is, how technoscience actualises realities that both (re)produce its routinized endeavours (Law 2008) and inevitably cling on the mapping of ever new spaces, temporalities and matterings. In doing so, STS questions the fabric of science and technology as two sides partaking (and contributing to) an always-in-the-making ontopolitical reality (Oksala 2010). This is also reflected in the dictum by quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg, according to which “we have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning” (Heisenberg 1958).

In this respect, societal-oriented readings of quantum theory (Barad 2007; Wallace 2010; Wendt 2015; Carroll 2019) have gone a long way in challenging the Cartesian rationalism and Newtonian determinism on which our imaginary and enactment of the social and physical world are traditionally based – including the techno-rationalization at the basis of the digital transformation. In fact, the digital transformation might be said to be a captive enactment of the Newtonian determinism and Cartesian rationalism, with data assumed as geometrical atoms bearing and logically building information. Already today, the field of quantum social sciences host contributions reworking the “classical” assumptions (in the sense of classical physics) underpinning various disciplines, such as international relations (Fierke and Mackay 2020), economics (Orrell 2018), decision theory (Busemeyer & Bruza 2012) and responsible research and  innovation (Braun 2024). However, currently no work has been done in connection with CDS and STS.

Hence, on the one hand, through quantum theory a space opens for a critical reframing of technoscientific practices and the sociotechnical effects of the digital transformation which challenges rationalism, binarism, determinism, and networkedness (among others). In this respect, the contributions to this issue are encouraged to explore these practices and effects from/through the onto-epistemological teachings of quantum theory, advancing alternative ways to think, represent, and enact physical, social, scientific, and digital worldmakings, their spaces and temporalities, as well as individual and collective governmentalities.

For instance: How can issues of digital self-determination and sovereignty be rearticulated via a quantum onto-politics? In which ways might discourses and initiatives of (physical and digital) sustainability be restructured around social quantum theory? To what extent could the onto-epistemology at the basis of quantum theory ground an alternative to (data) scientism? How can human and technological agencies be rethought through the quantum ecology? How could we reimagine the digital transformation (i.e., its rationalism and determinism) through a relational quantum ontopolitics? How might a genealogy of the “datum” beyond its natural givenness be critically sustained by/though quantum theory?

On the other hand, a favoured object of enquiry become QTs. Indeed, by embedding the engineering of quantum phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement – which are fundamentally probabilistic – into their workings, QTs have the potential to reconfigure the scope of the possible., i.e. what is scientifically and technologically graspable and how to process it (i.e. physical, social, and digital phenomena). While work investigating the ethical, legal, policy and social implications (ELPSI) of QTs already exists (de Jong 2022; Kop 2023), as well as studies that call for responsible research and innovation in relation to QTs (Coenen & Grunwald 2017), here contributions are encouraged to explore the impact of QTs in various fields, with particular regard to QTs’ innervation with and disruption of the digital transformation.

For instance: What are the (political and ethical) implications of mapping the physical and the social world through quantum sensing devices that introduce ever new in/visibilities? How can new forms of metrology sustain new forms of design of physical, social, and digital spaces and temporalities? How can quantum computation converge with AI and generate a mutual reinforcement, for better or worse? How is the sharing of data and its security be impacted by/through quantum communication? To what extent and with which effects can quantum simulation enact alternative worldmakings to the nD digital modellings, posited on rationalistic and deterministic accumulation of data? What might quantum computation tell us about the potentialities and limits of generative AI?

References
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Braun, R. 2024. "Radical reflexivity, experimental ontology and RRI." Journal of Responsible Innovation 11 (1). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/23299460.2024.2331651
Busemeyer, J., & Bruza, P. (2012). Quantum models of cognition and decision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Calzati, S., & de Kerckhove, D. (2024). Quantum ecology: Why and how new information technologies will reshape societies. MIT Press.
Carroll, Sean M. 2019. Something Deeply Hidden : Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime. Boston: Dutton an imprint of Penguin Random House.
Coenen, C., & Grunwald, A. (2017). Responsible research and innovation in quantum technology. Ethics and Information Technology, 19(4), 277–294.
de Jong, E. (2022). Own the unknown: An anticipatory approach to prepare society for the quantum age. Digital Society, 1(2), 15.
Dencik, L., Hintz, A., & Cable, J. (2016). Towards data justice? The ambiguity of anti surveillance resistance in political activism.” Big Data & Society, 3(2): 1–12.
Eubanks, V. (2018). Automating inequality: How high-tech tools profile, police, and punish the poor. New York: St. Martin’s.  Fierke, K. M, and N. Mackay. 2020. "To ‘see’ is to break an entanglement: Quantum measurement, trauma and security." Security Dialogue 51 (5): 450–466. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010620901909
Kop, M. (2023). Quantum-ELSPI: a novel field of research. Digital Society, 2(2), 20.
Heisenberg, W. 1958. Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science. New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers Publishers.
Hepp, A., Jarke, J., & Kramp, L. (2022). New perspectives in critical data studies: the ambivalences of data power—an introduction. In New Perspectives in Critical Data Studies: The Ambivalences of Data Power (pp. 1-23). Springer.
Kitchin, R., & Lauriault, T. (2014). Big data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts. Big Data & Society,  https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951714528481
Law, John. 2008. "On Sociology and STS." The Sociological Review 56 (4): 623-649.
Medrado, A., & Verdegem, P. (2024). Participatory action research in critical data studies: Interrogating AI from a South North approach. Big Data & Society, 11(1).
Oksala, Johanna. 2010. "Foucault’s politicization of ontology." Continental Philosophy Review 43 (4): 445-466.
Orrell, David. 2018. "Quantum Economics." Economic Thought 7 (2): 63-81.
Wallace, David 2010. "Decoherence and Ontology (or: How I learned to stop worrying and love FAPP)." In Many Worlds? Everett, Quantum Theory, and Reality, edited by Simon Saunders and et al. Oxford: Oxford Academic.
Wendt, A. (2015). Quantum mind and social science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press


Please submit your expression of interest by 15 August and submit abstracts (300 words) and short bios by 1 September to:



Stefano Calzati (stefanocalzati at hotmail.com<mailto:stefanocalzati at hotmail.com>) and Robert Braun (braun at ihs.ac.at<mailto:braun at ihs.ac.at>)

The decision from the journal about the thematic proposal will be in October 2025.

All best
Dr Stefano Calzati