Archive

Big Data Bodies: Machines and Algorithms in the World

I’m inter­est­ed in data and dis­crim­i­na­tion, in the things that have come to make us unique­ly who we are, how we look, where we are from, our per­son­al and demo­graph­ic iden­ti­ties, what lan­guages we speak. These things are effec­tive­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble to machines. What is gen­er­al­ly cel­e­brat­ed as human diver­si­ty and expe­ri­ence is trans­formed by machine read­ing into some­thing absurd, some­thing that marks us as different.

Collusion episode 3: Food

Food has always been tight­ly inter­twined with cul­ture and iden­ti­ty. As a result, it’s also been a com­mon tar­get of colo­nial­ism. Colonizers under­stood that by wip­ing out peo­ple’s food tra­di­tions, it would be eas­i­er to wipe out their ori­gins, their iden­ti­ty, and their his­to­ry. This kind of trend isn’t only in the past, though. In many areas of the world, dietary habits are chang­ing, food inequal­i­ty is rife, and some­how both obe­si­ty and hunger are on the rise on a glob­al scale.

Collusion episode 2: Water

Throughout the colonies of the var­i­ous European pow­ers, water engi­neers used dams, ditch­es, and sluices to con­trol the flow of water. They claimed that their approach to water man­age­ment was more ratio­nal and effi­cient than exist­ing indige­nous approaches. 

Collusion episode 1: Seeds

In this episode, we’ll take a broad under­stand­ing of the term tech­nol­o­gy” and look at how processed and tech­niques have affect­ed the way in which soci­etal ben­e­fits from cer­tain types of seeds have spread across the world, from indige­nous knowl­edges, to biotech­nol­o­gy, and patent­ing and pri­va­ti­za­tion of seeds.

Collusion pilot episode

We firm­ly believe that no tech­nol­o­gy is neu­tral, and that pow­er and tech­nol­o­gy are inex­tri­ca­bly inter­linked. In this pod­cast, we want to explore this rela­tion­ship fur­ther, think­ing about the pow­er dynam­ics that are, and have been in the past, cre­at­ed by technology.