Via Peter-Paul Verbeek.
Interesting video, seems a good pedagogical aid…
A five-minute animation explaining the basics of the approach of technological mediation.
Reblog> Animation explaining technological mediation
“The ideology of friendship” – new paper by Prof. Daniel Miller
This looks interesting – a paper building on the excellent Why We Post project… probably a good one for digital cultural geographers.
Here’s the title and abstract:
The ideology of friendship in the Facebook era
This article suggests that while anthropologists have developed a highly nuanced analysis of kinship and friendship under a more general comparative study of relationality, this emphasis upon practice needs to be complemented by an alternative focus on the use of these terms as ideology, where we find a more simplistic and dualistic usage. The rise of new social media and the verb friending highlights a more general shift from the idea of fictive kinship to that of fictive friendship, where it is the ideals represented by the supposed voluntarism and authenticity of friendship that has now come to dominate the way people view kin relations. Evidence is provided from ethnographies in the Philippines, Trinidad, and England that illustrate the prevalence of a practice where kin relations reposition themselves under the idiom of friendship with both negative and positive consequences. This incorporation of kinship within friendship can also bring back a sense of rule and obligation, which has led to a decline in the use of Facebook by the young.
Also, the paper quotes, in the introduction, a great scene from South Park that I use in teaching 🙂 See above.
Reblog> Job opening: 2-year postdoc position in philosophy and ethics of technology and design
Looks like an interesting opportunity…
From Peter-Paul Verbeek:
Technologies are increasingly designed to influence people’s behavior in directions that are seen as desirable, as approaches like ‘nudging’ and ‘persuasive technology’ show. At the same time, this development raises ethical concerns. The postdoc project ‘Designing Moral Mediation’ will develop both a philosophical and an ethical approach to behavior-influencing technologies.
The postdoc will become a member of the research team of the 5-year research project ‘Theorizing Technological Mediation’, which investigates human-technology relations in the domains of science, ethics, and religion. Within this context, the postdoc project focuses on ‘moral mediation’: the ways in which technologies mediate moral actions and decisions, and help to shape moral frameworks. We are looking for someone with expertise in philosophy of technology, human-technology relations, and /or ethics of technology.
More information: https://www.utwente.nl/en/organization/careers/vacancies/!/vacature/1049731
How and why is children’s digital data being harvested?
Nice post by Huw Davies, which is worth a quick read (its fairly short)…
We need to ask what would data capture and management look like if it is guided by a children’s framework such as this one developed here by Sonia Livingstone and endorsed by the Children’s Commissioner here. Perhaps only companies that complied with strong security and anonymisation procedures would be licenced to trade in UK? Given the financial drivers at work, an ideal solution would possibly make better regulation a commerical incentive. We will be exploring these and other similar questions that emerge over the coming months.
Through a data broker darkly…
Here’s an exercise to do, as a non-specialist, for yourself or maybe as part of a classroom activity: discuss what Facebook (data brokers, credit checkers etc etc.) might know about me/us/you, how accurate the data/information might be, and what that means to our lives.
One of the persistent themes of how we tell stories about the ‘information society’, ‘big data’, corporate surveillance and so on is the extent of the data held about each and every one of us. Lots of stories are told on the back of that and there are, of course, real life consequences to inaccuracies.
Nevertheless, an interesting way of starting the exercise above is to compare and contrast the following two articles:
Corporate Surveillance in Everyday Life:
The exploitation of personal information has become a multi-billion industry. Yet only the tip of the iceberg of today’s pervasive digital tracking is visible; much of it occurs in the background and remains opaque to most of us.
I Bought a Report on Everything That’s Known About Me Online:
If you like percentages, nearly 50 percent of the data in the report about me was incorrect. Even the zip code listed does not match that of my permanent address in the U.S.; it shows instead the zip code of an apartment where I lived several years ago. Many data points were so out of date as to be useless for marketing–or nefarious–purposes: My occupation is listed as “student”; my net worth does not take into account my really rather impressive student loan debt. And the information that is accurate, including my age and aforementioned net worth (when adjusted for the student debt), is presented in wide ranges.
Of course, it does not matter if the data is correct – those inaccuracies have real-world consequences, and the granularity of the accuracy only matters in certain circumstances. So, thinking about how and why the data captured about us matters, what it might facilitate – allow or prevent us or those around us doing seems like an interesting activity to occupy thirty minutes or so…
Responsibility gaps and autonomy – AI, autonomous weapons and cars
Over on the excellent Algocracy blog/podcast John Danaher interviews Hin-Yan Liu, a law scholar in Copenhagen who’s done some work on responsibility and autonomy in relation to autonomous weapons systems and driverless cars. The discussion is really interesting, thinking through various ways on understanding responsibility in relation to autonomy, expanding out ideas about what an ‘autonomous weapons system’ might be (such as – is a private military contractor an AWS?) and thinking through the ethical, moral and political issues of different ways responsibility gets understood. I encourage you to have a listen.
This stems from work by Liu that is published in two papers:
- ‘Autonomy in Weapons Systems’
- ‘Refining Responsibility: Differentiating Two Types of Responsibility Issues Raised by Autonomous Weapons Systems’
Here’s Liu’s faculty webpage.
Excellent postgrad opportunities with Data Justice Lab
From: Data Justice Lab
Funding is currently available for students in postgraduate programmes at Cardiff University, including the MA Digital Media and Society and the PhD in Journalism (with a focus on Digital Media and Society). Applications for the coming academic year (2017/18) are still accepted. Students are welcome to work on issues of data justice and become part of the Lab.
The MA Digital Media and Society explores current challenges in areas such as big data, digital rights, social media, digital culture and economy, internet governance and online politics. The Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies also offers a wide range of other MA programmes in areas such as journalism studies, data journalism, and political communication.
Cardiff University offers Master’s Excellence Scholarships in the form of a tuition fee discount. To be eligible for the scholarships, please apply for the MA programme no later than 15 June.
The School’s PhD programme encourages students to engage with one of its research clusters, including Digital Media and Society. Applications that are submitted by Friday 2nd June will be considered for an ESRC studentship programme that addresses research challenges in areas such as digital infrastructure and the use of data.
Cardiff’s School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies (JOMEC) is one of the world’s leading departments in Media & Communications. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework the school was ranked 2nd in the UK for the quality of its journalism, media and communications research.
“algorithmic governance” – recent ‘algorithm’ debates in geography-land
Over on Antipode’s site there’s a blog post about an intervention symposium on “algorithmic governance” brought together by Jeremy Crampton and Andrea Miller, on the back of sessions at the AAG in 2016. It’s good that this is available open access and, I hope, helpful that it maybe puts to bed some of the definition wrangling that has been the fashion. Obviously, a lot draws on the work of geographer Louise Amoore and also of political theorist Antoinette Rouvroy, which is great.
Reading through the overview and skimming the individual papers provokes me to comment that I remain puzzled though by the wider creeping use of an unqualified “non-human” to talk about software and the sociotechnical systems they run/are run on… this seems to play-down precisely the political issues raised in this particular symposium – that the kinds algorithms concerned in this debate are written and maintained by people, they’re not somehow separate or at a distance… It’s also interesting to note that a sizeable chunk of the debates concern ‘data’ but the symposium doesn’t have “data” in the title, but maybe ‘data–’ is passé… 🙂
I’ve copied below the intro to the post, but please check out the whole thing over on Antipode’s site.
Intervention Symposium: “Algorithmic Governance”; organised by Jeremy Crampton and Andrea Miller
The following essays first came together at the 2016 AAG Annual Meeting in San Francisco. Jeremy Crampton (Professor of Geography at the University of Kentucky) and Andrea Miller (PhD candidate at University of California, Davis) assembled five panellists to discuss what they call algorithmic governance – “the manifold ways that algorithms and code/space enable practices of governance that ascribes risk, suspicion and positive value in geographic contexts.”
Among other things, panellists explored how we can best pay attention to the spaces of governance where algorithms operate, and are contested; the spatial dimensions of the data-driven subject; how modes of algorithmic modulation and control impact understandings of categories such as race and gender; the extent to which algorithms are deterministic, and the spaces of contestation or counter-algorithms; how algorithmic governance inflects and augments practices of policing and militarization; the most productive theoretical tools available for studying algorithmic data; visualizations such as maps being implicated by or for algorithms; and the genealogy of algorithms and other histories of computation.
Three of the panellists plus Andrea and Jeremy present versions of these discussions below, following an introduction to the Intervention Symposium from its guest editors (who Andy and Katherine at Antipode would like to thank for all their work!).
Read the whole post and see the contributions to the symposium on the Antipode site.
Simondon and Technics event recordings
If you were not in Kingston earlier this week but have a desire to be part of the ‘next big thing in theory’, or you’re actually interested in the philosophy of technology, it appears that the talks were recorded… via dmf / Stuart Eldon.
Simondon on Technics: On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects
Please join the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) for a workshop to discuss Gilbert Simondon’s 1958 On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, finally now translated into English in its complete form.
Speakers: Andrea Bardin (Brunel University), Giovanni Carrozzini (CIDES, MSH Paris-Nord), Xavier Guchet (Paris 1 Sorbonne), Cécile Malaspina(translator), Simon Mills (De Monfort University), Pablo Rodriguez (University of Buenos Aires)
The 2016 English translation of Gilbert Simondon’s 1958 On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects finally introduces the Anglophone reader to a complete version of the French philosopher’s great work: a complex crossover between ontology, epistemology, psycho-sociology and the philosophy of technology. With the participation of international specialists on Simondon’s writings, this workshop aims to explore the main themes of Simondon’s philosophy of technology, connecting them to the relational ontology of communication processes outlined in Individuation in the Light of the Notions of Form and Information.
Reblog> CFP – Online Vitriol: Advocacy, Violence, and the Transforming Power of Social Media
Call for Papers
Online Vitriol: Advocacy, Violence, and the Transforming Power of Social Media
A Joint Conference of the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture & the Zentrum für Medien und Interaktivität, Giessen, Germany
Wednesday June 29th – Saturday July 1st, 2017 (optional opening lecture by dr. Sarah Kendzior on the evening of June 28th)
For whom:
Researchers in the fields of culture and (digital) media, and related fields
Professionals dealing with online advocacy and social media presence of their organization
Journalists and others dealing with social media and (violent) online discourse
PhD and MA students in culture and media studies
Conference aim:
To employ our collective knowledge, experience, research and intelligence to arrive at a conceptual and practical understanding of the medial and cultural dynamics of online vitriol.
To work towards “A Rough Guide to Online Vitriol: Dealing with Violence and Activism on Social Media in Theory and Practice” (working title). To be published later.
Social media have become inescapable, and they have an overwhelming impact on sociality and public life. Platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram give rise to a diverse range of discourses and communication styles. This conference wants to understand the power of social media, not only – as it has often been perceived – as democratizing, but also as powerful vehicles for politically driven bullying and violence. Relevant to people, organizations, and other agents across twenty-first-century society, this topic is increasingly studied from a range of disciplines and perspectives. Virtually everyone has to deal with social media and the discourses it enables and produces. But while the technology exists and seems at first sight intuitively accessible, the agency, dynamics and ethics of social media platforms are not yet well-understood.
‘Trolls for Trump’, online virus ‘scares’, fake news – social media discourse has become a formidable, yet elusive, political force. This conference wants to begin to address some of the issues around the power of online vitriol, by studying discourses, metaphors, media dynamics, and framing on social media. What is it? How does it work? What does it do? And how can it be addressed or countered?
To fruitfully question the political impact of contemporary communication structures and discourses, the conference goes beyond the traditional presenter/audience dichotomy. Instead, it works towards producing a book for academics and professionals confronted with social media violence, provisionally titled “A Rough Guide to Online Vitriol: Dealing with Violence and Advocacy on Social Media in Theory and Practice”. The conference combines academic theorizing with perspectives from professionals active in media, communication, the public sector and journalism, so as to arrive at conceptually rigorous and useful conclusions to guide our own and our organizations’ use of social media.
Possible topics
Bringing together media and communication specialists from various professions (e.g. public sector, press, NGOs) and cultural and media studies students and scholars, the aim is to create crosspollination between theoretical approaches from cultural and media studies on the one hand, and practical challenges and experiences ‘from the field’ on the other.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
Privacy and surveillance through social media platforms
Liveness and online temporalities
Tweeting while female
Clickbait as political activism
Shares, likes, profile clicks and other platform-specific metrics
The impact of Facebook’s platform structure and changing algorithms on what can be expressed
‘Communicative capitalism’ and the dynamics of online virality
Politics of trolling and reporting
Representing social media in popular culture
How ‘new’ are online communication practices?
Framing narratives and ideals in a potentially hostile environment
Practical
The conference is free of charge. However, we ask that, during the conference, all participants agree to be offline, and try to be fully present and contemplative.
We welcome proposals of papers, case studies, ideas, and discussion topics from scholars and professionals in the listed fields, as well as related areas of specialization. Please submit a 300-word abstract and a short biography (100 words) to Sara Polak (s.a.polak@hum.leidenuniv.nl), Rahel Schmitz (rahel.schmitz@gcsc.uni-giessen.de), and Ann-Marie Riesner (ann.m.riesner@gcsc.uni-giessen.de) by May 15th, 2017.