Frank Pasquale – Black Box Society – chapter 1 (pp 1-11)

This book talked a lot about the secrecy of the government, banks, and software  while relating it all into the same realm. I found it interesting how Frank related the secrecy and volatility of banks years after the recession to the data firms stealing your data as we speak. One of my favorite quotes of this reading that summed up some of these points concisely was “All these are protected by laws of secrecy and technologies of obfuscation.” I think this summed up a lot of what Frank mentioned about confusing the consumer and being very opaque. He briefly discusses the long prospectuses, and disclosure agreements of corporations and how their intent is to just confuse the readers. He brings up how some are tens of thousands of pages, and they often reference to other things, that reference to other things. I think one thing you can take away from this reading is that we as consumers and members of society should really think about our right to have access to our data being collected, and/or the knowledge how it is collected.

Cathy O’Neill – The era of blind faith in big data must end (Ted Talk, 13m)

This was in the final 30 seconds of the Ted Talk but was a very powerful quote.. “Data Scientists should not be arbiters of truth, we should be translators of ethical discussions that happen in larger society.” I thought this summed up this talk very well. There is a big issue with algorithms making decisions in certain fields that are biased, and are not making logical decisions. The fact that teachers are not only gettin scored, but losing their jobs because of a score does not make sense if they are liked by everyone they work with and work for. I thought the Fox news scandal was interesting to bring up. It’s ironic that after the entire scandal, Fox acted like they were going to clean slate and remove all these previous biases and favoritism, yet they make hiring algorithms based on all their previous data. 

Virginia Eubanks – Automating Inequality (talk, 45m)

Eubanks builds a digital poorhouse based on the economic depression in 1820. 

It’s not really fair the the medicaid workers were replaced by algorithms in Indiana and then 1 million cases were denied for so called not completing the online application. This puts somebodies life at stake because of not signing a form online.

Janet Vertesi – My Experiment Opting Out of Big Data…  (Time, short article)

Even though this article is short, and tells me a lot of information that I have already been told, it really did still surprise me and have a powerful theme. I knew it would be difficult if somebody tried to go completely anonymous online and avoid every single form of data tracking, but I didn’t know you would look like a criminal doing this. “But avoiding the big-data dragnet meant that I not only looked like a rude family member or an inconsiderate friend, but I also looked like a bad citizen.” This is crazy how these are the implications of literally trying to buy something without having a data footprint. Now this really is the best way to explain to somebody how publicized our society is now, and how much surveillance capitalism has taken over our world.

Walliams and Lucas – The Computer Says No (comedy skit, 2m)

Hilarious. I love how he asked for the survey at the end. It’s very true that sometimes you’re talking to these receptionists and it’s like they just talk straight out of the computer. Delegitimatizing what you say sometimes because the computer says something else. Super funny skit though, watched it twice.