Algorithms of Oppression: To be quite honest, I’m not surprised at all. I remember hearing of her work before, I believe from your Interactions I class and it’s honestly quite moving how a search engine, that we would think to be neutral, offers up so many racist and misogynistic suggestions. How three black teens are seen criminalized while three white teens are innocent stock photos or what women cannot/shouldn’t/should/need to do or the hypersexualization of asian/latina girls. Google is merely a reflection of our own society and what we search up. Are we really that surprised when we live in a country that voted for a racist misogynist to become the president?
How can we change a search engine to become neutral when the data is dominated by the users? Is it google’s fault, or ours?
Race After Technology: While Jim Crow is gone, Jim Code lives on through racist robots. It’s interesting to see that while this technology was never born racist, it became racist because it lacked the context of the systemic racism already put in place. This also made me think of the HP(?) computer that was racist because it could not identify a black face because most likely, the people who made it, tested it on themselves and did not consider POC (which is why a diverse work environment is so important). The Stop The Cradle To Prison Algorithm reminded me a lot on the other topic we addressed in where they also tracked through GPS location, collected, and shared the data of college students to see which students were at-risk in class. I found the white-collar early warning system hilarious because this is the type of crime that we don’t really see being reported on with facial recognition of likely perpetrators (the average white male).
In what ways can we help black youth succeed? How can police learn empathy and create a safer relationship with these kids?
Laboring Infrastructures: I remember Lisa Nakamura! She introduces the idea of empathy in VR. Which I am still fascinated by. We are so accustomed to our own ways of life that it might be hard for us to be put in the shoes of someone entirely different. Many people don’t care about what happens to other people, as long as it’s not happening to them. Having VR give the public a chance to experience Trayvon Martin’s last moments, or even just the life of the average black woman or transgender wheelchair users still offers that unique experience of being able to feel what they feel.
I feel, however, that this idea might have to be disguised in some way because I feel like people whose mind we genuinely want to change, will not give this a shot because of the title