Please join us for this next iteration of CEH TALKS where we welcome Rianne Riemens from Radboud University in Nijmegen.

In her PhD work, Rianne studies the strategies used to by big tech companies to convey a positive connection between them and ongoing climate and environmental changes as well as the underlying ideology of ecomodernism (please see abstract and biography below).

The event is open to anyone interested with no registration necessary. For those interested, please consider joining us for dinner downtown following the talk.

Abstract
In recent years, tech companies have taken explicit positions as actors in the ‘fight’ against the climate crisis. American tech companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon invest in a ‘tech-on-climate discourse’: an ongoing production of keynotes, mission statements, ads and other texts and images that emphasize technological solutions to the climate crisis and obfuscate their enormous environmental impact. In this talk, Rianne shares the main findings from her doctoral research into the discursive strategies and underlying environmental ideology of Silicon Valley and its central figures.

The analysis of tech-on-climate discourse reveals a shared worldview about the relation between humanity, technology and nature and the transformations societies have to undergo in the face of climate crisis. The ecomodernist ideology of Silicon Valley – rooted in historical tech and environmental discourse – promotes green growth as solution to the climate crisis. This solution includes plans to recycle materials and use renewable energy, but also databases that help us better ‘understand’ planet Earth or move entire communities to outer space. The talk addresses how through smart forms of ‘coupling’ and ‘decoupling’, Silicon Valley offers an attractive green future, but not a convincing response to the urgent climate crisis.

Biography
Rianne Riemens is a PhD candidate at the department of Arts & Culture at Radboud University, studying the position of digital platforms in the climate crisis. Her research is part of the ERC project ‘Platform Discourses’ led by dr. Niels Niessen. Before her PhD, she has worked as a researcher at Utrecht University and as a writer at several Dutch cultural institutions. Her research focuses on digital platforms from an environmental perspective. She is particularly interested in the public outreach of Big Tech, and the cultural and political impact of the myths and future visions created in Silicon Valley. She has published on public values and platform urbanism, representations of the sun in tech discourse and the role of user precarity and machinic visibility in Big Tech’s promotional materials.