Cycle of debates

STEAM-H

Technotrash: electronic junk, material, social and algorithmic debris produced by contemporary digital culture

20 March, 17 April, 8 May

The Cultural Container / 12:00-14:00

FREE ENTRY

STEAM-H Debate Series

Commissioners: Nuria Rodríguez Ortega and Pedro Plaza

Organised by: Telefónica-UMA Chair in collaboration with the Vice-rectorate for Culture, the ETSI of Telecommunications and the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts.

In 2026, the Telefónica-UMA Chair proposes a cycle dedicated to techno-waste, understood in a broad sense: not only as electronic scrap, but also as material, human, social and algorithmic remains produced by contemporary digital culture. The aim is to activate a critical and transversal reflection on what technologies expel, hide or degrade in order to sustain their dynamic of innovation.

The cycle is divided into three complementary sessions - film, literature, documentary - that explore the different layers of technological waste:

the material and visible
the human and symbolic
digital and algorithmic

Dates: 20 March, 17 April and 8 May

Location: The Cultural Container

Timetable: 12:00-14:00.

Registration: Free

Participation in all the sessions, together with the completion of the complementary activities, will give rise to a certificate of achievement valid for 2 ECTS.

Attendance at the sessions is free of charge.

General Objectives

  • To promote a critical and transdisciplinary vision of contemporary technoculture.
  • Articulate a STEAM-H space where engineering, humanities and arts coexist.
  • Activating the imagination as a tool for exploring possible futures.
  • Raise awareness of the material and social impacts of technology.
  • Encourage student participation through debate and co-creation dynamics.
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S01 - Film Fiction (Friday, 20 March)

WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008). Material rubbish: archaeologies of a saturated planet

The first session addresses techno-waste from the perspective of the animated fiction. At WALL-E, Earth has become a gigantic rubbish dump, abandoned by humans and managed by small rubbish compacting robots. The film gives food for thought: the waste accumulation as a condition of consumer capitalism; the externalisation of environmental costs towards the planet and towards non-human bodies (robots/machines); the fantasy of a humanity that separates itself from the Earth and delegates the dirty work to technical systems.

Main lines of debate

  • What does it tell us WALL-E on the future of e-waste and consumer technology?
  • Which bodies do the job of «managing the trash» in the film, and which bodies do it in the real world?
  • How do you imagine the bond between humans and Earth when the planet is treated as waste?
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S02 - Fiction reading (Friday, 17 April)

Human remains, future remains: reading Cubit (Vicente Luis Mora)

The second session introduces the language of literary fiction to explore techno-waste as a human and symbolic phenomenon. Cubit proposes a near future where the tensions between artificial intelligence, mineral materiality and human subjectivity allow us to think of «waste» from another place: displaced bodies, fractured imaginaries, overlapping temporal layers.

Main lines of debate

  • Material and mineral waste as a metaphor for the future.
  • Subjects overwhelmed or driven out by artificial intelligence.
  • Layers, layering, remnants: how does fiction narrate our digital ruins?
Amazon Amazon Read Sample

S03 - Documentary film (Friday, 8 May)

In the bowels of AI (Henry Poulain, 2025)

The hidden face of AI: infrastructure, invisible labour and digital waste

The third session shifts attention to what AI often hides: its physical infrastructure (data centres, energy and water consumption) and the global work chain needed to produce and maintain «smart» systems. Through the documentary In the bowels of AI, examines how the promise of autonomous AI rests on landscapes transformed by digital industry and millions of human data preparation tasks, often outsourced to impoverished countries, with psychological and emotional costs for those who perform them.

Main lines of debate

  • What material infrastructures make AI possible (energy, water, data centres) and what «leftovers» do they generate in territories and ecosystems?
  • Who are the invisible workers who prepare and clean the data (micro-tasking, labelling, moderation) and what risks do they take?
  • How does our idea of innovation change when we include the environmental footprint and labour conditions of the AI production chain in the analysis?
  • How do these AI «entrails» connect to the material rubbish of WALL-E and the human/mineral remains that traverse Cubit?

Glosario expandido:
Waste technologies

Transversal activity of the cycle

El ciclo STEAM-H 2026 incorpora, como hilo conductor de las tres sesiones, la elaboración de un glosario expandido titulado «Waste technologies». Esta actividad se desarrolla de forma progresiva en cada encuentro.

La tecnología no desaparece: deja huella. Este proyecto transversal invita a estudiantes de distintas disciplinas a explorar el lado menos visible de lo digital —residuos, obsolescencia, datos, infraestructuras, energía e impacto ambiental— y convertirlo en mapas, vídeos, infografías, relatos, visualizaciones o prototipos. Las mejores piezas podrán difundirse en una muestra final o repositorio digital del ciclo, y la mejor será objeto de un reconocimiento especial.

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