Attending to ‘Computational Universalism’: Practices, Frictions, Events

This research note reflects on, and responds to, Lee and Ribes discussion of ‘computational universalism’, setting this in dialogue with Suchman’s account of ‘The uncontroversial “thingness” of AI’ and with wider STS literature. In discussing the conceptual resources that STS has to offer with regard to studying computational universalism we reflect on existing scholarship oriented to technical vernaculars, digital practices and frictions, and event thinking. In closing we suggest that in studying computation we should attend not only to how our research objects are constituted through the analytical languages and tools we use to engage with them, but how we, as researchers and research community, are being made alongside our objects.