In her book ‘Discriminating Data‘ (2021), Wendy Chun reveals how polarization is a goal — not an error — within big data and machine learning. These methods, she argues, encode segregation, eugenics, and identity politics through their default assumptions and conditions. Hito Steyerl and Wendy Chun will discuss how can people release themselves from the […]
What does feminist data science look like? What is feminist data science? How is feminist thinking being incorporated into data-driven work? And how are scholars in the humanities and social sciences, in particular, bringing together data science and feminist theory in their research? Drawing from our recent book, Data Feminism (MIT Press, 2020), we will […]
Sheelagh Carpendale from Simon Fraser University's School of Computing Science presents to the DDI. Her research interests include: information visualization, interaction design, large display interaction, visual analytics, personal visualization, human computer interaction, interactive technologies, collaborative interaction, open data, data empowerment. More details TBD. Email ddi_lab@sfu.ca for Zoom link.
Taming Big Tech: Exploring the Alternatives - How to re-claim digital platforms for democracy in Canada Wendy Chun in conversation with Andrew Clement. Wendy Chun is Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media at Simon Fraser University. She leads the Digital Democracies Institute which aims to develop methods for creating effective online counterspeech and alternative […]
In Discriminating Data: Correlation, Neighborhoods, and the New Politics of Recognition, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun reveals how polarization is a goal—not an error—within big data and machine learning. These methods, she argues, encode segregation, eugenics, and identity politics through their default assumptions and conditions. Correlation, which grounds big data’s predictive potential, stems from twentieth-century eugenic attempts […]
Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR). Prior to that she was fired by Google in December 2020 for raising issues of discrimination in the workplace, where she was serving as co-lead of the Ethical AI research team. She received her PhD from Stanford University, and […]
Life in Pixels hosts an ongoing series of transdisciplinary conversations thinking about how we can make sense of, and live with, our computational social condition today. Considering sociocultural, aesthetic, politicoeconomic, environmental, racial, and historical registers of technology together, the series will bring together people who think and do technology beyond disciplinary boundaries. The events are […]
Susan Schuppli, Goldsmiths University of London, is an artist-researcher and writer. She is currently Director & Reader of the Centre for Research Architecture. Through investigative processes that involve an engagement with scientific and technical modes of inquiry, her work aims to open up new conceptual pathways into the material strata of our world. While many […]
Join McMaster University for a public talk (on Zoom) by Dr. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun entitled "The Digital Democracies Institute and why interdisciplinary work is effective, productive, and necessary". Dr. Chun is a 2022 Hooker Distinguished Visiting Professor at McMaster University, sponsored by the Department of Communication Studies and Media Arts, the Department of English […]
AI and Disinformation: State-Aligned Information Operations and the Distortion of the Public Sphere Courtney C. Radsch, PhD, is a journalist, scholar and practitioner whose work focuses on the intersection of technology, media, and human rights. Currently, she is a fellow at UCLA’s Technology, Law and Policy Institute; a senior fellow at the Center for International […]
University of Waterloo - Thursday, February 10, 2022, 6 to 9 p.m. online in three parts | Register now Have you ever observed a divisive, rage-fuelled fight online and wondered about the role technology played in the background? In her most recent book, Discriminating Data (2021), Wendy Chun reveals how polarization is a goal—not an error—within big data […]
COVID-19 has highlighted the extent to which researchers who publicly share their expertise and the results of research face harassment and personal threats. The intimidation of experts has recently garnered significant media attention, but it is a problem that has affected the safety, well-being, and work of those who produce knowledge for some time. There […]