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Manufacturing Dreams

We used to think that sleep is a pas­sive process caused by reduced sen­so­ry stim­u­la­tion so that our nor­mal men­tal and phys­i­cal activ­i­ties can shut down. We held this belief since the time of Aristotle, and per­haps even before that. But now we know that this idea is com­plete­ly wrong.

Data & Society Databite #41: Ifeoma Ajunwa on Genetic Coercion

The mythol­o­gy of genet­ic coer­cion is thoughts that genet­ic data, espe­cial­ly large-scale genet­ic data­bas­es, have the abil­i­ty to pin­point cer­tain risk of dis­ease. They pro­vide agency to act to pre­vent such dis­ease, and it can be used to cre­ate accu­rate per­son­al­ized treat­ment for dis­ease, and it should also be entrust­ed with the author­i­ty to dic­tate the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the genome for future generations. 

Safiya Noble at Biased Data

I often try to tell peo­ple that Google is not pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion retrieval algo­rithms, it’s pro­vid­ing adver­tis­ing algo­rithms. And that is a very impor­tant dis­tinc­tion when we think about what kind of infor­ma­tion is avail­able in these corporate-controlled spaces.

Crafting Visions

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.

Re-calling the Modem World: The Dial-Up History Of Social Media

Where did the Internet come from? And in order to answer that ques­tion, you would have to have a pret­ty clear idea of what you mean when you say the Internet.” I sus­pect that if we were to poll every­body in the room, we would have a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent, some­times con­tra­dic­to­ry, some­times incom­pat­i­ble, some­times over­lap­ping, def­i­n­i­tions of the Internet.”

Privacy Illustrated

[L]ast week we went into sev­er­al class­rooms in the area and asked the kids What does pri­va­cy mean to you?” What do you think about when you think about pri­va­cy? Draw us some pictures.

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