Safiya Noble – Algorithms of Oppression (talk, 45m)

This video was very insightful and actually sent me on a mission to try and find out biases of googles search engine. I thought it was very surprising that not only for minorities, but for women there was ridiculously inappropriate websites coming up for certain searches. Since this video is from 2017, I’m sure there was a lot of different changes that google made to their search engine, especially when searching phrases about race or gender. I understand there is a lot of things about google searches that can’t be patched, what you search is what you search. But there is a a lot of instances where there is deliberate racism and oppression in some searches. When looking at criminals, professional hairstyles, and porn websites, it is not a coincidence that these searches are discriminatory. 

Ruha Benjamin – Race After Technology (talk, 20m)

The project in St. Paul Minnesota that tried to prink youth that are at risk ties back to the software we talked about that rates students in college. I feel like this heavily discriminates against certain people, and sometimes can do more harm than help. There shouldn’t be an algorithm, or a company telling you who is “at risk” and who isn’t. 

Lisa Nakamura – Laboring Infrastructures (talk, 30m)

This talk takes a different view on racism and technology. Lisa starts the talk discussing how we wouldn’t have any of our novel technology without asian women making them for little money. I find it interesting that she brings up the company Pathos and there website description is that they disrupt oppression and discrimination. Right before that Lisa shows an excerpt from their founder saying that nobody seems to know anything about where VR is going and there is no rules yet. Kind of ironic.