Consider the paradox that technology has provided for us. We seem more diverse and open as a society, but isn’t it also the case that we are more homogeneous and insecure than we ever have been in the last century or so?
The whole Library Freedom Project, everything that we do is very deeply inspired by Aaron’s spirit, his work in resistance, his legacy. And every day that we go into libraries and teach practical privacy trainings, I feel like Aaron is very much present in all that we do.
Tonight I am very happy to say that Open Library is healthy, with more than 9 million visitors every month, serving and reaching the metadata of more than 25 million editions, 6 million authors, and we even serve 7 million covers through an API.
The whole point of myth is that it’s just the kind of ambient stuff of culture that you can reach out and do whatever you need to do with. Yes, it means things, sort of, it has dispositions, it has tendencies, but you could rewrite all of that.
It’s the expectations themselves that start to change the material qualities of our world, the material qualities around science and technology, around our political activities. That it’s not just that the entrails have been read, but the fact that you now have to make a decision whether you’re going to heed that warning or not.
Afrofuturism is really about the black body and the black mind seeing itself put into a space that is beyond the white supremacist structure that we’re currently in at the moment.
As any working mage knows, the first thing that happens when you bring up a lot of power is that you have to figure out how you’re going to channel it. Now ideally, if you’re not an idiot, you figure that out before you bring the power up. Unfortunately this is Silicon Valley we’re talking about, so that’s really not on the table.
I’m going to talk about things that scare me on the Internet, things that I’m afraid of, and things that maybe we can’t yet make a horror film. We definitely can’t make a film as bad as The Ruins about this stuff, but I would say it’s a lot scarier than The Ruins, which is just gross.
I think there’s something interesting about a discipline that historically is tied to political intrigue, to secrecy, being linked into this debate over what is good magic or true divine magic, and what is the work of demons. And I think there is something interesting to be said about the moment we are in right now and how states themselves kind of identify and invent existential threats to justify their own behavior.
Pretty much anything that Lucifer says in Paradise Lost, you could probably imagine the CEO of Uber saying. They’re just disrupting the Heavenly orders, you know. They really needed it.
Projecting Change was part our post-professional MA in Adaptive Reuse program. It was inspired by the effects of Hurricane Sandy, which turned Newport, Rhode Island into a lake. Read more →
The question also does come up, you know, is there anything really new here, with these new technologies? Disinformation is as old as information. Manipulated media is as old as media. Is there something particularly harmful about this new information environment and these new technologies, these hyperrealistic false depictions, that we need to be especially worried about? Read more →
You have to think with your users, with your customers, what is your actual relationship? Are they your gods? Are they your guests? Are they a nuisance to you? Because you know where the power is. Read more →
I'm going to talk about a bot-like creation that was occasioned by NaNoGenMo last year, World Clock. It has a rather curious story to what's happened after I developed it. Read more →
This is the second day of our conference on governing algorithms and we've already been treated to two outstanding presentations by Bob Tarjan and Claudia Perlich, with insights into what…well, a little bit into what algorithms do. And today we continue to explore the social, philosophical, ethical, legal significance of algorithms. Read more →