lab // sofia scarlat

_{see here: 1) what i'm building, 2) my previous work and interests, 3) my manifesto, and at the very bottombuilding: transdisciplinary company + lab building products and research connecting societal system breakdowns with breakdowns in information and symbol distribution and interpretation; decentralization of traditional, vertical power structures through agentic/ custom technology}

_{about me:22, from romania, currently stanford and new yorkawarded princess diana legacy award by HSH prince william, highest accolade a young person can receive for humanitarian workwork with teams at the UN, european union on conflict prevention and post-conflict societal reconstruction and resilient community building, including a technological lensaged 20 (2023) invited to speak at UN HQ in nyc to heads of state/ gov about the presence of technology in conflict affected areaslived in conflict areas to study/ work directly on impacts of social disruptions: on the ground in rwanda (propaganda distribution), kenya (disarmament and peacekeeping). northern ethiopia: built AI ecosystem mapping to trace, record, and analyze data about mass atrocities committed in the area. worked remotely on ukrainerevised significant global policies (ex: 2024 EU children trapped in armed conflict act)former speechwriter for the prime minister of iceland in communication to world leadersbuilt impact evaluations for the world bank, tracking cash transfer assistance in perupreviously: dropped out after freshman year of high school in romania to build from scratch the now-largest social impact organization in the country, 100+ staff; changed national legislationdid social systems engineering, international systems and law, social design, emerging tech + history of sociotechnical change at stanford through the sociology department. wrote my thesis on the potential of emerging technologies to decentralize traditional power structures and enhance individual decision-making power in conflict-affected areas+ boxer, reader, one time documentary maker, archivist, can fly a plane, can't drive a carlanguages: romanian, english, swahili, french, russian, latin}

_{manifestoseamlessness — tech is so embedded in society and daily life that it becomes natural, inevitable, and invisible. It is often unclear where human agency ends and nonhuman agency begins in complex sociotechnical systemsboundaries between human and nonhuman actors are not pre-given but are instead attributed or performed through social practices and interactionserasure of embodiment so that intelligence becomes a property of the formal manipulation of symbols rather than some set of actions in the human life-world. information as an entity distinct from the substrates carrying it, as a kind of bodiless fluid that could flow between different substrates without loss of meaning or form + human identity as essentially an informational pattern rather than an embodied enactionpower is maintained through controlling how information is distributed and interpreted. technology breaks down this control because it is able to distribute, classify, limit, expand etc. knowledge and information in a manner that disrupts the original patternsocial structures are not merely abstract containers for human action but are inherently material and technological, which complicates traditional sociological analyses of social power and agencyanalyzing social interactions must include nonhuman elements such as machines and infrastructures – because a purely social network analysis would overlook how technology and materiality shape these interactions. network analyses must include nonhuman elements to capture how technology mediates social relationships and influences power dynamicslimitations on what we say not as product of a lack of intelligence but as a product of limitations on what can be done: difference between what a system might know vs what it does. competence vs performance+ there is knowledge and possibility that is rendered inaccessible by our inability to look beyond traditional research or disciplines. reality exists between and beyond disciplines as well, on several layers at oncetechnology mediates and transforms the character of social relationships, which makes it crucial to include technological artifacts in sociological studies of interaction and power. Thinking: tech world is building a lot of agentic tech that directly impacts human agency and expression, things like personal assistants, tools for connecting and collecting knowledge etc. → changes your experience of daily life……but the people who design the frameworks within which you live that daily life, from the urban planning of the community you live in to the design of the interdependency with the international community that they establish, have no concept of this new experiencethe challenges of today require more and more competencies than ever to be resolved, but it has also become more difficult than ever for people from two "distinct" disciplines to communicate. serious efforts would need to be made for a physicist to speak to a poet beyond generalities. this renders decision-making (whose purpose is knowledge integration, lowering ideas into the "body" of the world + preventing collapse of civilizations) impossible in today's social frameworks because they cannot hold all competencies at once...... meaning that as knowledge becomes more inaccessible or fragmented across disciplines that cannot communicate, decision makers inevitably and unknowingly become more and more incompetentthese alterations to our environment, social behavior, infrastructure etc. inherently also change the way in which we reach understandings of what is going on in our world --> struggle ensues for meaning-makingradical technological inventions are often also suppressed by organizations that see them as threats to their established systems, yet these inventions frequently become the foundational elements of new technological paradigms + all models, belief systems, and methods gain their epistemic power by establishing constraints within a structural framework, excluding all other alternativesanalyzing why technology matters, rather than merely explaining how it works, allows us to shift the focus of science and technology studies to deeper philosophical and societal questionsinterpretative flexibility: technical artifacts have multiple potential meanings and uses, making the role of social groups central in shaping their interpretation and stabilizationsocial structures are not just containers for action but are themselves material and technological, complicating traditional sociological analyses of power, class, race, etc.focus on the entanglement of humans and nonhumans can serve as a foundation for political action, emphasizing the need for nuanced understanding in policy and ethics
social groups play a crucial role in defining and stabilizing technologyinternet, apps etc. - tools built with the promise of community and social reward, but have failed to provide this in that they only offer the feeling of social reward rather than any material benefit. this deconstructs, then, any larger, local or national attempts at cohesiontraditional philosophy separates science (truth discovery) from technology (application), but this model oversimplifies their interdependence. whether scientific theories are true or false is irrelevant to sociological analysis; what matters is how knowledge is socially accepted, embodied and institutionalizedmagic tricks: rely on accepting at an early stage assumptions that determine how you interpret what you see later. technology has already integrated us in a cybernetic circuit that interacts with our will, desires, perceptions etc into a distributed cognitive system. no matter what you do after or with that, you've already entered the era because you've accepted the early stage assumptionswhat are the ancestors of the domesticated ideas we spread today?building upon the beautiful work of: romanian theoretical physicist basarab nicolescu, romanian philosopher cioran, romanian historian of religion eliade, and foreign colleagues among disciplines, including feminist posthumanism: dennett, hayles, braidotti, haraway, and others.}