The following topics are available for student group selection and discussion leading. If you want to use a source that isn’t on this list, please propose it and we’ll discuss whether it’s appropriate.
Warmup / Day 1:
Oliver, Savičić, Vasiliev – Critical Engineering Manifesto
Surveillance / Privacy / Resistance (29 Jan):
Shoshana Zuboff – The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (video documentary, 50m)
Helen Nissenbaum – Mapping Interventions – Digital Democracies Conference (talk, 30m)
Carole Cadwalladr – ’I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’ (Guardian)
Stuart A Thompson and Charlie Warzel – One Nation, Tracked (NY Times)
Drew Harwell – Colleges are turning phones into surveillance machines (Washington Post)
Jenny Davis – A clear case for resisting student tracking (Cyborgology)
Interface Criticism / Tactical Media / Software Art (5 Feb):
Wendy Chun – Programmed Visions, (book, pp. 1-2, and optionally pp. 3-10)
Matthew Fuller – How to be a Geek (book, pp. 12-14, and optionally pp. 63-71)
Geert Lovink – Sad by Design (podcast w/ Douglas Rushkoff, 60m)
Soren Pold – New ways of hiding: towards metainterface realism (article)
Social Interaction, Social Photography, and Social Media Metrics (12 Feb):
Nathan Jurgenson – The Social Photo – (book, pp. 1-15)
Jill Walker Rettberg – “What can’t we measure in a quantified world?” (talk, 20m)
Ben Grosser – What do Metrics Want? How Quantification Prescribes Social Interaction on FB (article)
Technology and Race (19 Feb):
Safiya Noble – Algorithms of Oppression (talk, 45m)
Ruha Benjamin – Race After Technology (talk, 20m)
Lisa Nakamura – Laboring Infrastructures (talk, 30m)
Big Data / Algorithms / Algorithmic Transparency (4 Mar):
Frank Pasquale – Black Box Society – chapter 1 (pp 1-11)
Cathy O’Neill – The era of blind faith in big data must end (Ted Talk, 13m)
Virginia Eubanks – Automating Inequality (talk, 45m)
Janet Vertesi – My Experiment Opting Out of Big Data… (Time, short article)
Walliams and Lucas – The Computer Says No (comedy skit, 2m)
AI / Predictive Analytics / Recommendation Algorithms (11 Mar):
James Bridle – Something is wrong on the internet (Medium)
Rachel Metz – There’s a new obstacle to landing a job after college: Getting approved by AI (CNN)
Jia Tolentino – How TikTok Holds our Attention (New Yorker) (read or listen)
Eric Meyer – Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty (article)
Rachel Thomas – The problem with metrics is a big problem for AI (article)