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DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220302T123000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220302T133000
DTSTAMP:20260608T062457
CREATED:20220223T222941Z
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SUMMARY:Yuan Stevens presents to the DDI
DESCRIPTION:Markets\, Architectures\, Norms\, or Law? Regulating Automated Face Recognition in Canada \nYuan (“You-anne”) Stevens is a legal and policy expert focused on information integrity\, data protection and human rights. She works towards a world where powerful actors—and the systems they build—are held accountable to the public\, especially when it comes to equality-seeking communities. She brings years of international experience to her work\, having examined the impacts of technology on marginalized populations in Canada\, the US\, and Germany. Yuan is a collaborator at the Centre for Media\, Technology and Democracy at McGill University and research fellow at the Centre for Law\, Technology and Society at uOttawa. She previously worked at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society during her studies in joint degree in civil and common law at McGill University.
URL:https://digitaldemocracies.org/calendar/yuan-stevens-presents-to-the-ddi/
LOCATION:Online
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220309T123000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220309T133000
DTSTAMP:20260608T062457
CREATED:20220224T025343Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220224T025343Z
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SUMMARY:Jonathan Beller presents to the DDI
DESCRIPTION:Jonathan Beller is a Professor of Humanities & Media Studies at the Pratt Institute. \nOne of the foremost theorists of the visual turn and the attention economy; works on the history of cinema and the way in which the screen-image has altered all aspects of social life; books and edited volumes include: The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle\, Acquiring Eyes: Philippine Visuality\, Nationalist Struggle and the World-Media System\, and Feminist Media Theory (a special issue of The Scholar and Feminist Online); serves on the Editorial Collective of the internationally recognized journal Social Text.
URL:https://digitaldemocracies.org/calendar/jonathan-beller-presents-to-the-ddi/
LOCATION:Online
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220310T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220310T183000
DTSTAMP:20260608T062457
CREATED:20220222T233234Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220222T233234Z
UID:2062-1646931600-1646937000@digitaldemocracies.org
SUMMARY:Discriminating Data: Wendy Chun in dialogue with Yuk Hui 
DESCRIPTION:Book Conversation: Discriminating Data by Wendy Chun\nIn dialogue with Yuk Hui \nThu 10 March 2022\, 5pm PST / Fri 11 March 2022\, 9am HKT\nOnline Event: Register to join via Zoom\nFacebook Event: https://fb.me/e/304BhrtRH \nIn this event\, Wendy Chun will discuss her latest book Discriminating Data (2021\, MIT Press) in conversation with Yuk Hui. \nIn Discriminating Data\, 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 to “breed” a better future. Recommender systems foster angry clusters of sameness through homophily. Users are “trained” to become authentically predictable via a politics and technology of recognition. Machine learning and data analytics thus seek to disrupt the future by making disruption impossible.\nChun\, who has a background in systems design engineering as well as media studies and cultural theory\, explains that although machine learning algorithms may not officially include race as a category\, they embed whiteness as a default. Facial recognition technology\, for example\, relies on the faces of Hollywood celebrities and university undergraduates—groups not famous for their diversity. Homophily emerged as a concept to describe white U.S. resident attitudes to living in biracial yet segregated public housing. Predictive policing technology deploys models trained on studies of predominantly underserved neighbourhoods. Trained on selected and often discriminatory or dirty data\, these algorithms are only validated if they mirror this data.\nHow can we release ourselves from the vice-like grip of discriminatory data? Chun calls for alternative algorithms\, defaults\, and interdisciplinary coalitions in order to desegregate networks and foster a more democratic big data.\n\nWendy Hui Kyong Chun is Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media in the School of Communication\, and Director of the Digital Democracies Institute at Simon Fraser University. She has studied both Systems Design Engineering and English Literature\, which she combines and mutates in her current work on digital media. She is author of Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (MIT\, 2006)\, Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (MIT 2011)\, Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (MIT 2016)\, and Discriminating Data (2021\, MIT Press)\, and co-author of Pattern Discrimination (University of Minnesota + Meson Press 2019). She has been Professor and Chair of the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University\, where she worked for almost two decades and where she’s currently a Visiting Professor.
URL:https://digitaldemocracies.org/calendar/discriminating-data-wendy-chun-in-dialogue-with-yuk-hui/
LOCATION:Online
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220316T123000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220316T133000
DTSTAMP:20260608T062457
CREATED:20220301T222106Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220301T222106Z
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SUMMARY:Lorena Jaume-Palasí presents to the DDI
DESCRIPTION:Lorena Jaume-Palasí is the founder of The Ethical Tech Society\, a non-profit organization researching processes of automation and digitization with regards to their social relevance. Lorena researches the ethics of digitization and automation. In this context\, she also deals with questions of legal philosophy. In 2017 she was appointed by the Spanish government to the High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence and Data Policy. She is one of the 100 experts of the Cotec Foundation for her work on automation and ethics. She is a Fellow of the Bucerius Foundation and a member of the Advisory Board on Education and Discourse of the Goethe Institute. Lorena has testified before the European Parliament and the European Commission on Artificial Intelligence and Ethics on several occasions. She additionally heads the secretariat of the German National Section of the IGF as well as projects on Internet Governance in Asia and Africa. Lorena is regularly consulted by international organizations\, associations and governments. She has co-authored and edited various publications on internet governance and regularly writes on data protection\, privacy and publicity\, public goods and discrimination. In 2018 she was awarded the Theodor Heuss Medal for “her contribution to a differentiated view of algorithms and their mechanisms” for AlgorithmWatch initiative.
URL:https://digitaldemocracies.org/calendar/lorena-jaume-palasi-presents-to-the-ddi/
LOCATION:Online
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220322T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220322T123000
DTSTAMP:20260608T062457
CREATED:20220322T181734Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220322T181734Z
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SUMMARY:Wendy Chun at Latent Spaces - Performing Ambiguous Data
DESCRIPTION:The value of ambiguity.\nData\, Proxies and the limits of the computable via YouTube Stream \nwith Mireille Hildebrandt & Wendy Hui Kyong Chun\, moderated by Felix Stalder \nMireille Hildebrandt:\nThe politics of ambiguity and the issue of proxies\nIn my talk\, I will argue that what matters is not computable. However\, it can be made computable\, and in different ways. This difference in turn matters\, it makes a difference for those who will suffer or enjoy the consequences. To make things computable developers need proxies\, as computing systems cannot deal with the ambiguity of the languages we live in. Decisions on disambiguation and the choice of proxies have far-reaching implications\, There is a politics in these design decisions that requires our keen attention. This is where transparency and agonistic debate are pertinent. \nMireille Hildebrandt is a lawyer and philosopher who works at the intersection of law and computer science. She is the Research Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel[1] and at Radboud University Nijmegen. She is also the principal investigator of the ‘Counting as a Human Being in the Era of Computational Law’ project (2019–2024). The research targets two forms of computational law: machine learning and blockchain technology. \nAmong her many publications\, the most relevant for this series is: \nHildebrandt\, Mireille. 2019. “Privacy as Protection of the Incomputable Self: From Agnostic to Agonistic Machine Learning.” Theoretical Inquiries in Law 20 (1): 83–121. \nWendy Hui Kyong Chun:\nThe Politics of Proxies\nData proxies spell trouble and they are everywhere. They are the interfaces where the unknowable is translated into the known. They provide a measure for that which cannot be measured. As such\, they are full of political assumptions\, troubling the clean separation between data and model. The inherent ambivalence of proxies can open the space for a critique that is less about whether the models “get it right”\, but about which models we want. \nWendy Hui Kyong Chun is Research Chair in New Media at Simon Fraser University\, Vancouver. Since its launch in 2019\, she leads the Digital Democracies Institute which aims to integrate research in the humanities and data sciences to address questions of equality and social justice in order to combat the proliferation of online “echo chambers\,” abusive language\, discriminatory algorithms\, and mis/disinformation by fostering critical and creative user practices and alternative paradigms for connection. \nAmong her many publications\, the most relevant for this series is \nChun\, Wendy Hui Kyong. 2021. Discriminating Data: Correlation\, Neighborhoods\, and the New Politics of Recognition. Cambridge\, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. (in particular\, the section on “proxies”). \nThis is the first event of a three-part series of talks and workshops that explore ambiguity and data.
URL:https://digitaldemocracies.org/calendar/wendy-chun-at-latent-spaces-performing-ambiguous-data/
LOCATION:Online
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220330T123000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20220330T133000
DTSTAMP:20260608T062457
CREATED:20220301T222129Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220301T222129Z
UID:2098-1648643400-1648647000@digitaldemocracies.org
SUMMARY:Tung-Hui Hu presents to the DDI
DESCRIPTION:Tung-Hui Hu is associate professor at the University of Michigan in the department of English Language and Literature. He is the author of three books of poetry\, The Book of Motion (2003)\, Mine (2007)\, and Greenhouses\, Lighthouses (Copper Canyon Press\, 2013)\, a chapbook\, On the Kepel Fruit (Albion Books\, 2017)\, and a study of digital culture\, A Prehistory of the Cloud (MIT Press\, 2015)\, which was described by The New Yorker as “mesmerizing… absorbing [in] its playful speculations”. His new book\, an exploration of burnout\, isolation\, and disempowerment in the digital underclass\, is Digital Lethargy\, forthcoming from MIT Press. \nHis research has been featured on CBS News\, BBC Radio 4\, Boston Globe\, New Scientist\, Art in America\, and Rhizome.org\, among other venues. Hu has received awards from Yaddo\, MacDowell\, the NEA\, the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin\, and the San Francisco Foundation\, and his poems have appeared in places such as Boston Review\, The New Republic\, Ploughshares\, the Academy of American Poets’s Poem-a-Day\, and the anthology Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of Hybrid Literary Genres. He is a member of the editorial board of Afterimage.
URL:https://digitaldemocracies.org/calendar/tung-hui-hu-presents-to-the-ddi/
LOCATION:Online
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