Prefiro construir pontes a muros
“And as the world is getting smaller ans smaller
Black White, Asian Dub Foundation (R.A.F.I. and R.A.F.I.’s revenge)
We can only be getting closer and closer
Building this community of sound
Celebrating the unity we’ve found
And we know this is the model to follow
For all the dub children of tomorrow
As they grow under shifting skies
We’ll see every nation in their eyes”
Really powerful. One can only dream.
What if email – which can be seen as an instant messaging tool – and its related technologies, protocols, and regulations had received much more attention from F/LOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) and public interest technology practitioners and funders in the last 15 years?
What if, for the last 15 years or so, we had more research, updates, and improvements not only to the technology and protocols but to its regulations and the issues around it as well? For example, efficient and non-privacy intrusive anti-spam, meaningful compliance to anti-spam laws and protocols, etc.
What if we had had reliable, safer, private, and easier to use encrypted email? Would it have curbed instant messaging apps? How would disinformation campaigns be different? How would surveillance capitalism have reacted to it?
Coded Bias (Shalini Kantayya, 2020) is a documentary examining at some of most pressing problems of our age, the nexus of societal issues like racism, genderism, ageism and several biases and machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence. If you have the opportunity to watch it, please, do it. It is now available on Netflix.
A few days ago had the opportunity of a live streaming of the movie followed by a conversation Joy Buolamwini (author of Gender Shades, an influential research on racial bias and facial recognition technologies and co-founder of Algorithmic Justice League), Cathy O’neill (author of Weapons of Math Destruction), Ruha Benjamin (author of People’s Science and Race After Technology) and Zeynep Tufekci, and other incredible researchers and activists, in an online event promoted by the African American Policy Forum (AAPF).
Here are some bits of the movie and the conversation that I think are interesting or newcomers to this discussion:
As mentioned, If you have the opportunity to watch it, please, do it. It is now available on Netflix. And if you are interested in setting up a watch party and discuss the movie, let me know.
“[…] technology is not simply a tool—neutral on all possible outcomes, good or bad—but something more dynamic, messy and complicated. It’s a complex system where the workings of both the technology and our society, and crucially, how they interact with each other matter greatly[…]
Instead, it’s always important to pay attention to a company’s incentives, and especially how it makes money. This is especially crucial with digital platforms, where the real mechanisms aren’t as easily visible. […]
“we still face this idea that the internet is a game, that the virtual world is something distinct from the real one. This condescension is even embedded in the phrase IRL—“in real life,” meaning not online.” […]
This complex interplay between business models, technology, and existing power structures in our society means that we have to move beyond simple narratives: The underdog is winning! Technology is liberating us! The underdog has lost! It must be technology’s fault! […]
The social contract is broken, and that’s why the game feels rigged. […]
When things are so unequal, and power so concentrated on one side, moralizing takes about whether r/WallStreetBets is a mob ring hollow. What makes them “a mob” for trying to profit together, while Davos is a distinguished gathering? […] But the internet isn’t a pony that empowers only the nice groups we like (Arab Spring dissidents, but not white supremacists), nor does it magically and instantaneously alter the power dynamics in society (so the underdog can suddenly be assured of a Hollywood ending).”
Zeynep Tufekci
Great article by Zeynep Tufekci published on The Atlantic. A highlighted a few parts below, but you should read it whole: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/02/gamestop-mess-shows-internet-rigged-too/618040/
“the individual should have the freedom to select for himself the time and circumstances when he will share his secrets with others and decide the extent of that sharing.”
(Justice William Douglas apud Shoshana Zuboff)
Read in the opinion piece by Shoshana Zuboff on The New York Times.
We think intelligence is about playing Go. But practically no one plays Go. Or chess. Real intelligence is being able to walk through an incredibly crowded street on a busy evening, nimbly, when you don’t even think about it, while at the same time recalling memories and replaying things in your brain. What I’m saying is that human beings have been reduced to a very simplified version of themselves, which they’ve accepted, in order to fit into this machine model, both of society and the internet. But we are extraordinary and we can do extraordinary things. We are so much more than what they are forcing us to accept.
Adam Curtis interview to Tom Hodgkinson at Idler