Book Reviews by Theodora Dryer
Papers by Theodora Dryer
This article links optimization algorithms in US southwestern water management to equitable appor... more This article links optimization algorithms in US southwestern water management to equitable apportionment and prior appropriation water policies in the 1950–1990 period. I argue that quantitative water law and algorithmic water management are co-constitutive historical processes, as they derive from the same formulation of settler colonial space and time—a practice I call settler computing. Settler computing clarifies how the settler theft of Indigenous natural resources is formalized within projects of data-driven resource management. I engage this history by reflecting on a major water planning project led by the Bureau of Reclamation called the Central Utah Project (CUP), which was formally enacted in 1956.
Algorithms Under the Reign of Probability , 2018
This Think Piece situates algorithmic uncertainty as a heightened revival of an earlier social co... more This Think Piece situates algorithmic uncertainty as a heightened revival of an earlier social commitment to probabilistic knowing emergent in the interwar period. As a critical site for interdisciplinary exchange, mapping out uncertainty practices and models makes visible the social dimensions and impacts of certainty politics.
Water Justice and Technology, 2022
Our report intervenes into the currently accelerating water transition by clarifying the politica... more Our report intervenes into the currently accelerating water transition by clarifying the political functions of “relief” in COVID-19 water policy agendas through grounded analyses of harmful technological solutions in local contexts throughout North America and Central America. We find that crisis-and-relief water transition policies, and their corresponding technological solutions, work against possibilities for water justice as they do not address the realities of racial capitalism and settler colonialism in water governance.
Water Justice and Technology North America and Central America, 2022
Since the time of its first white settlers, the U.S. West has been paradoxically imagined as a pl... more Since the time of its first white settlers, the U.S. West has been paradoxically imagined as a place of infinite natural abundance and looming resource scarcity. In the era of accelerating drought brought on by climate change and agricultural mismanagement, long-standing resource anxiety increasingly manifests as discourse about imminent “water wars.” Yet while many dread such conflict, others may welcome it: white supremacist and armed militia groups seize on claims of environmental scarcity in order to stir fear, build membership, and threaten violence in media-grabbing spectacles. The militia-run “water crisis info center” recently set up in Klamath Falls, OR--which locals wryly called “the circus tent”—is a lesson in how inflammatory rhetoric may exacerbate existing inequalities of water access in the U.S. West. It teaches us to be prudent with the language we use when talking about drought, prepare ourselves to defuse escalation by white supremacists, and follow the lead of communities that are pursuing water-ways based in relations of care and responsibility.
Whole document can be found here: https://ainowinstitute.org/water-justice-technology.html
Books by Theodora Dryer
Uploads
Book Reviews by Theodora Dryer
Papers by Theodora Dryer
Whole document can be found here: https://ainowinstitute.org/water-justice-technology.html
Books by Theodora Dryer
Whole document can be found here: https://ainowinstitute.org/water-justice-technology.html