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Sandeep Mertia

@sandeepmertia.bsky.social
144 followers 102 following 26 posts

asst prof of tech & society • ICT engineer turned anthropologist of global computing, media, & the state • ed, ‘Lives of Data’ (2020) • I still use Twitter to “monitor the situation” 😌 www.stevens.edu/profile/smertia

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Reposted by Sandeep Mertia
Science, Technology, & Human Values @sthv.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
New OnlineFirst article: "Dreamy Stacks: Digital Public Infrastructure, Futurity, and Failure in Startup India" by Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social #digital #infrastructure #data #artificialintelligence #start-ups #globaltech #futures #failure journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
Thank you to the Hype Studies group for bringing together such an eclectic group of scholars, practitioners, & artists at this conference! 🙌🏽 The critical experimental & non-hierarchical approach reminded me of Sarai :)
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
A short essay on the state of global digital capitalism(s) and futures in/from India and China, based on @linzhang.bsky.social 'The Labor of Reinvention' (2023)
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
Amidst everything (& its attendant self-censorship), I am so deeply grateful to my students this semester for keeping me sane through their curiosity, engagement, & comradery! 💙
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
Looking forward to (remotely) speaking at the 50 years of Media Studies Conference at Westminster today! #UoWMEDIA50
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
It's so fulfilling to see my STS students think through a critical sociotechnical problem like AI use in higher-ed more self-reflexively and relationally than most of the expert public commentators on the topic! 🥲
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
#grading gem, definitely not written by any LLM: "Nobody warned C. P. Snow that his tidy mid‑century parable about “The Two Cultures”would be rebooted as a late night TikTok doom scroll, yet here we are with our thumbs twitching..." 🥲
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
@aakashs.bsky.social and I have written an opinion piece in today’s The Indian Express. Our original title was “Startups as Reasons of the State: Why India Fails to Imagine New Techno-Futures.” Please do read and share your thoughts. Thank you! indianexpress.com/article/opin...
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
Happening tomorrow: A Quick History of Algorithms (for post-algorithmic teens) 🧓🏽🔥✨ hobokenlibrary.libnet.info/hoboken-publ...
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
This is less canonical, and more of an attempt to answer why study STS in the here and now?https://www.academia.edu/127235339/HST120_Introduction_to_STS_Spring25_Mertia?source=swp_share
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
Drafting my coping strategy for the Spring’25 semester 😬✨
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
The “datafied” postcolonial state: no census, critical edu or health datasets but look IndiaStack, UPI, DigiYatra. Post-industrial theories of data colonialism or surveillance capitalism can hardly explain the innovations the Indian state does in the name of data ✨ www.indiaspend.com/data-gaps/cr...
indiaspend.com
Critical Data Remain Elusive, As 2024 Comes To A Close
16 critical datasets are delayed, nine ministries are yet to release their annual reports and the Census is now three years overdue, affecting policy-making and weakening transparency
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
www.linkedin.com/posts/smruti... “We are increasingly seeing the phenomenon of the "dumb" well-published academic […] The roots can be traced to the decline of values in the American academic system, which is sadly getting mimicked in the Indian academic system.”
linkedin.com
Smruti Sarangi on LinkedIn: Rise of the "dumb" well-published academic | 53 comments
We are increasingly seeing the phenomenon of the "dumb" well-published academic -- someone who has published loads of papers yet does not know the basics of… | 53 comments on LinkedIn
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
In my college days (back in Gandhinagar), we only had occasional unscheduled visits from stray dogs & monkeys 😌
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
Final presentations, Computers and Society, Fall’24: I’ve made it to my students meme-scapes! 🥲
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
I want this app to work, but so far it’s no match for the dumpster fire ethic of the old one 😌 #LuigiMangione
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Last lecture, Fall’24 ✨
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
The dustbin of techno-futurities scaling up 🚀 “..despite the surge in the late 2010s, India’s growth rate for mobile internet subscribers has slowed in the past few years. And as of October 2024, almost half, or 46%, of the population is still not connected to mobile internet.” t.co/0XISvmLvWl
t.co
https://restofworld.org/2024/mobile-internet-users-growth-rate
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
Zizek’s (beginning?) to talk about China’s and India’s soft fascisms to think about anti-teleological histories. Cute. youtu.be/OSYjmH_WPQQ?...
youtu.be
Philosopher Slavoj Žižek on 'soft' fascism, AI & the effects of shamelessness in public life
YouTube video by OxfordUnion
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
I saw dozens of such examples in my fieldwork with start-ups in Jaipur. As I work on the book, I keep wondering what could a non-parochial, non-provincial, non-suffering slot-ifying theory of tech, capital, & power in most of the world do to counter-speculate against such hype-cycled predicaments 😌
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Reposted by Sandeep Mertia
PenPencilDraw @penpencildraw.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
Bribe-that Mata.
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Reposted by Sandeep Mertia
Kumail Nanjiani @kumail.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
Bluesky feels like I took a Time Machine back to 2009 when I was still like “Hey this social media thing is going to make the world a better place.”
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Reposted by Sandeep Mertia
Nirdiganta @sevendeviled.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
Markedly less Palestinian & Lebanese content here, though that might be an effect of immediate networks and algorithms, though I hear Bluesky has been suspending accounts as well. The difference from X is nonetheless eerie & alarming in the midst of genocide & war.
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
I'm just starting to use this app, & wondering if the discourse here (among US-based academic networks) is likely reproducing the monotechnological thinking that we've seen elsewhere 😌 networkcultures.org/blog/2022/09...
networkcultures.org
Christopher Kelty: The Internet We Could Have Had
Ten years ago I began writing a book. It was going to be called Power/Sharing and would pick up on my previous book Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. It was a turbulent time: the o
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Reposted by Sandeep Mertia
Samanth Subramanian @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
In this week's New Yorker: My profile of Ganesh Devy, who assembled the first Indian survey of languages in a century, and who now lives in Dharwad as a protest against forces who will kill writers and impose religions and languages [1] www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
newyorker.com
Should a Country Speak a Single Language?
In India, one of the world’s most polyglot countries, the government wants more than a billion people to embrace Hindi. One scholar thinks that would be a loss.
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Sandeep Mertia @sandeepmertia.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
Hello! So, what’s the best way to find friends from Twitter & elsewhere here? 😌
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