Archive

Afro Tech: Afrofuturism, Telling Tales of Speculative Futures

The exhi­bi­tion Afro-Tech and the Future of Re-Invention puts Afrofuturism in dia­logue with alter­na­tive tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions and imaginations.

Understanding Systems and Creating Change

One of the things I found inter­est­ing about both of your con­ver­sa­tions is that as we start to see code becom­ing a pow­er­ful force in soci­ety, we’re no longer just try­ing to change laws but we find ourselves—just as we’re cit­i­zens try­ing to encour­age the gov­ern­ment or con­gress­peo­ple to change laws—we’re now stand­ing out­side of com­pa­nies say­ing well, there’s code that affects our lives.

Using Data to Create Social Change

I think that it’s becom­ing hard­er for many peo­ple to feel like they can achieve social change either through the bal­lot box, or through protest, which is sort of our main mech­a­nism where when we can’t win argu­ments at the bal­lot box we stand up and show that we’re not hap­py about things. I want to make the case that both of those meth­ods are actu­al­ly suf­fer­ing as a form of social change. 

Ethan Zuckerman on Truthiness

When you’re look­ing at some­thing as big as these ques­tions of ver­i­fi­a­bil­i­ty, truth, truthi­ness, dis­in­for­ma­tion, so on and so forth, I find myself now try­ing to pick apart the ques­tions we talked about this morn­ing from the per­spec­tive of tractabil­i­ty. So let me use that to sort of frame a cou­ple of the con­ver­sa­tions we’ve had and then a cou­ple of things that haven’t come up, and then see if I can sort of push us for­ward a lit­tle bit into where we go this afternoon.

MIT Media Lab Defiance: Introduction

Part of what’s real­ly inter­est­ing at the moment is that most peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly young peo­ple, don’t have a lot of faith in insti­tu­tions. They’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly excit­ed about this idea that we go to the polls, we elect rep­re­sen­ta­tives, those rep­re­sen­ta­tives speak for us and that is how change happens.

FollowBias: Supporting Behavior Change Toward Gender Equality on Social Media

In 2011, the cul­tur­al crit­ic Emily Nussbaum reflect­ed on the flow­er­ing of online fem­i­nism through new pub­li­ca­tions, social media con­ver­sa­tions, and dig­i­tal orga­niz­ing. But Nussbaum wor­ried, even if you can expand the sup­ply of who’s writ­ing, will that actu­al­ly change the influ­ence of wom­en’s voic­es in soci­ety? What if online fem­i­nism was just an echo chamber?

Forbidden Research: Sexual Deviance: Can Technology Protect our Children?

One of the big things that we’re going to talk about here is para­phil­ia. We’re going to talk about sex­u­al deviance. We’re going to talk about the prob­lem of peo­ple whose sex­u­al desires lead to attrac­tion to chil­dren, lead to attrac­tion towards vio­lent sex, lead to sex­u­al trans­gres­sion in one fash­ion or another.

Forbidden Research Welcome and Introduction: Ethan Zuckerman

As we dug into this top­ic, we real­ized research gets for­bid­den for all sorts of rea­sons. We’re going to talk about top­ics today that are for­bid­den in some sense because they’re so big, they’re so con­se­quen­tial, that it’s extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for any­one to think about who should actu­al­ly have the right to make this deci­sion. We’re going to talk about some top­ics that end up being off the table, that end up being for­bid­den, because they’re kind of icky. They’re real­ly uncom­fort­able. And frankly, if you make it through this day with­out some­thing mak­ing you uncom­fort­able, we did some­thing wrong in plan­ning this event.

The Conversation #36 — Ethan Zuckerman

We are in the midst of a shift in how we encounter infor­ma­tion. And we’re wrestling with three par­a­digms at the same time. The old­est of these par­a­digms, for for most of us, is edit­ed media. … You have a pow­er­ful gate­keep­er, the news­pa­per edi­tor, who says, Here are things you need to pay atten­tion to today. Give this a small amount of your time, and you will be rough­ly up to date with what you need to know.”