Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Cryptology and Social Life Workshop) By Mikaela Brough
By Mikaela Brough (CDT in CyberSecurity 2022) From December 11–12, I attended the Cryptology and Social Life Workshop in Trondheim, hosted by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). I was drawn to this workshop because the attendees comprised a unique academic mix — those whose work touches on, or is at least informed to some extent by, an interest in the socio-political and cultural implications of cryptographic technologies. Among the attendees were both social scientists (e.g., design anthropologists and sociologists) and cryptographers. What made the workshop distinctive was not only the topics of the talks, but the format itself. Each keynote was followed by extended small-group discussions, deliberately set up to bring together people from different disciplinary backgrounds. The result of this was not just a series of presentations, but in-depth conversations across fields that do not always share the same assumptions, methods, or vocabularies. In my...