The Library of the Incalculable by Dr Payal Arora
Join Internet Archive Europe in conversation with Dr. Payal Arora as she presents her new book, The Library of the Incalculable with V2 Lab for the Unstable Media.
What of the people, lives, and things that do not fit the logic of algorithms — not because they are unknowable, but because they are deemed unprofitable and uninteresting to our algorithmic systems? In a world where worth is measured in metrics and predictive power, what happens to all that cannot or will not be counted?
To be incalculable is to fall outside the purview of the global economy. Yet within this space of neglect, a new politics of life might be imagined. Incalculability is not absence but potential: a way of sensing the world that values relationality over extraction, care over computation, and the commons over the countable.
Drawing on the voices of the majority world — and contributors in the book including philosophers, artists, innovators, activists, and scholars who have long understood that to be human is to live beyond measure — this book imagines an archive of that which escapes Big Tech's gaze: gestures of care and compassion, humor and satire as resistance, feelings of camaraderie and belonging, and the moral imagination of the marginalized.
At once urgent and hopeful, The Library of the Incalculable humbles the algorithm, challenges extractive digital systems, and asks a radical question: What if the future belongs not to what is most measurable, but to what is most human?
Program
Dr. Arora will present the book for 20–30 minutes, followed by a moderated panel conversation with Bei Wang and Emily Tucker, exploring themes from the book in relation to their own work.
Speakers
Dr. Payal Arora is a Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures at Utrecht University and Founder of the Inclusive AI Lab. She is a digital anthropologist and author of award-winning books, including The Next Billion Users (Harvard Press) and From Pessimism to Promise (MIT Press). Payal is a 2025 Women in AI Benelux Award winner and was named among the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics. Forbes has called her the "next billion champion" and "the right kind of person to reform tech." LinkedIn
Emily Tucker is the Executive Director of the Privacy Center at Georgetown Law, where she leads research on digital era surveillance. Before academia, Emily was a movement lawyer, supporting communities organizing for racial and economic justice. She was a 2021 Soros Justice Fellow and a 2025 National Endowment for the Humanities grantee. LinkedIn
Bei Wang is a digital China expert, lecturer, and researcher. A former international newsroom chief editor at Dutch broadcaster RNW Media, where she launched its digital China department, and co-founder of tech startups, she speaks internationally on human-centered technology, inclusive innovation, and digital transformation, exploring how digital technologies are reshaping people, cultures, and societies in China and beyond. LinkedIn