lectures – Datagram

The Promise of Access, with Daniel Greene

Why do we keep trying to solve poverty with technology? What makes us feel that we need to learn to code—or else? This common sense has ruled our economic imaginary for at least 30 years. Those who cannot log on or train up are condemned to the margins of the information economy and contained by… Continue reading The Promise of Access, with Daniel Greene

What is Digital? with Robin Boast

There are a huge number of Whiggish (deterministic) histories of digitality and digital computing. What is less known are the multitude of diverse stories and technologies that contributed to the rise of the ubiquitous technologies we have today, often in very clumsy, coincidental and circuitous routes. Many of our prized progenitors are less pure or… Continue reading What is Digital? with Robin Boast

Native Creatives and the Digital Intrusion, with Miranda Belarde-Lewis

Native artists are observing and incorporating digital technologies into their work, as functional components, within immersive virtual or augmented reality simulators, or as a social commentary on the shift in cultural and environmental degradation facilitated by the technological era we are now living through. It feels silly to say this in any context but it… Continue reading Native Creatives and the Digital Intrusion, with Miranda Belarde-Lewis

Rooted in Community: The Equitable Internet Initiative, with Janice Gates

About 38% of households in Detroit have no broadband connection at home with 63% of low-income households with no broadband connection. The median household income in Detroit is $26,249. Up to 70% of school-aged children in Detroit have no Internet access at home. In Detroit’s lower-income communities, affordable internet access either does not exist or… Continue reading Rooted in Community: The Equitable Internet Initiative, with Janice Gates

The Life & Times of a Digital Practitioner, with Jono Brandel

Note: It finally happened, we got zoom bombed! At about 6 minutes into the talk you’ll experience an edited version of the chaos. The twenty-first century career landscape for digital practitioners is a constantly evolving space. The opportunity to work with corporations, to research in academic institutions, to freelance, and to stir your own patronage… Continue reading The Life & Times of a Digital Practitioner, with Jono Brandel

Small is Beautiful: Telecommunications as if people mattered, with Steve Song

Slightly more than half of the world is connected to the internet but the growth of affordable access infrastructure in rural areas in general and poorer countries in particular has begun to slow. The pandemic has revealed the importance of affordable internet access for ALL citizens but current market strategies and regulation have not succeeded… Continue reading Small is Beautiful: Telecommunications as if people mattered, with Steve Song

Technological Refusal: Reflections on developing a politics of computing, with Dr Seeta Peña Gangadharan

Notes from the lecture: In keeping with the theme of her talk (technological refusal), Dr Seeta Peña Gangadharan asked that we not record her lecture. A similar talk was already available on YouTube, and that’s what I’m sharing here. Speaking with computer science students, Dr Seeta Peña Gangadharan made the case that computing needs to… Continue reading Technological Refusal: Reflections on developing a politics of computing, with Dr Seeta Peña Gangadharan

Reframing the Questions of Ethics in AI and Data Analytics, with Paul Dourish

From political manipulation on social media to racial bias in criminal justice systems, a range of problems have turned public and professional attention towards the questions of ethics in AI and data science. Just what are those questions, though? Simply asking what the ethics of those technologies might be seems to presume the inevitability of… Continue reading Reframing the Questions of Ethics in AI and Data Analytics, with Paul Dourish

Seamful Civics, with Carl DiSalvo

Design is often cast as a way to streamline government and social services. But in our work with communities, time and again we encounter situations in which there is a value to friction and calling attention to disjunctions. Drawing on research in Human-Computer Interaction and Science and Technology Studies, we characterize these situation as seamful… Continue reading Seamful Civics, with Carl DiSalvo

Prototype Nation: China & the Contested Promise of Innovation, with Silvia Lindtner

How did China’s mass manufacturing and “copycat” production become transformed, in the global tech imagination, from something holding the nation back to one of its key assets? Prototype Nation offers a transnational analysis of how the promise of democratized innovation and entrepreneurial life has shaped China’s governance and global image. Lindtner reveals how a growing… Continue reading Prototype Nation: China & the Contested Promise of Innovation, with Silvia Lindtner

Securing the World: Public Interest Technology & the need for ‘Smart’ Regulations, with Bruce Schneier

Computer security is no longer about data; it’s about life and property. This change makes an enormous difference, and will shake up our industry in many ways. First, data authentication and integrity will become more important than confidentiality. And second, our largely regulation-free Internet will become a thing of the past. Soon we will no… Continue reading Securing the World: Public Interest Technology & the need for ‘Smart’ Regulations, with Bruce Schneier

Distributed Disinformation Defense, with Sara-Jayne Terp

Disinformation is affecting our every-day lives. In 2016, we discussed disinformation campaigns in terms of the impact on the US election. In just 4 years, misinformation has evolved to the point where it is now being used by a spectrum of threat-actors from activists to nation states, who routinely use cybercraft as a preferred approach.… Continue reading Distributed Disinformation Defense, with Sara-Jayne Terp

Edinburgh Culture & Communities Mapping Project, with Morgan Currie

From March to July 2019, the ‘Edinburgh Culture and Communities Mapping Project,’ held seven public mapping events that invited people from the cultural sector to offer their perspective on the city’s cultural infrastructure – to name spaces and vital community hubs they value. The result is an interactive map of cultural spaces that artists, art… Continue reading Edinburgh Culture & Communities Mapping Project, with Morgan Currie

Meaningful Inefficiencies: Civic Design in an age of Digital Expediency with Gabriel Mugar

Public trust in the institutions that mediate civic life—from governing bodies to newsrooms—is low, and many organizations assume that greater efficiency will build trust. As a result, these organizations are quick to adopt new technologies to enhance what they do. However, efficiency, in the sense of charting a path to a goal with the least… Continue reading Meaningful Inefficiencies: Civic Design in an age of Digital Expediency with Gabriel Mugar

Appropriate Architecture, with Jeff Burke

Contrasting architectures with the systems built on them, this talk will discuss opportunities and barriers for the arts to drive innovation at the level of technological infrastructure. It will revisit the appropriate technology movement as it relates to the increasingly calcified digital architectures impacting human communication and creative expression. As examples, we will cover a… Continue reading Appropriate Architecture, with Jeff Burke

Digital Feudalism & the Key Technology Battles of the Next Administration, with Sascha Meinrath

Over the past quarter-century, the liberatory and empowering potentials of new digital technologies have been squandered by Democratic and Republican administrations alike. While the rhetoric of reform and corporate accountability has been widespread, systemic failures to rein in harmful practices have stretched rule of law to the breaking point. And whether one looks at broadband… Continue reading Digital Feudalism & the Key Technology Battles of the Next Administration, with Sascha Meinrath

Agonism & Activism: community organizing in datafied worlds, with Roderic Crooks

Contemporary forms of data activism promise community organizers the means to pursue political action, but they simultaneously threaten to responsibilize individuals and communities for documenting collective harms that are already known to the state (and to community members themselves). This talk uses Mouffe’s articulation of agonistic pluralism to analyze recent literature on data activism in… Continue reading Agonism & Activism: community organizing in datafied worlds, with Roderic Crooks

The Software Arts, with Warren Sack

The subject of Warren Sack’s talk will be The Software Arts, a book recently published in the MIT Press “Software Studies” series. Sack offers an alternative history of software that traces its roots to the step-by-step descriptions of how things were made in the workshops of eighteenth-century artists and artisans. He illustrates how software was… Continue reading The Software Arts, with Warren Sack