DATA C104 - Midterm Notes
HCE Toolkit: Agency - correct answer-The ability or capacity to act or exert
power
- Technology allows people to perceive and exert some degree of control over
their sociotechnical relations
Cases:
- Algorithmic decision-making (COMPAS, Gig economy laborers)
- Real-time interplay of human and mechanical agency (autonomous vehicles,
pilots)
- Patients tracking their health through data apps and devices
- Google Walkout
- Disruptive innovation and the tech entrepreneur agent
HCE Toolkit: Classification - correct answer-Implicit and explicit social
organization of beings and knowledge into discrete categories governed by
identifiable principles
- Societies produce knowledge and do work (with technologies) by sorting,
ordering, and classifying phenomena
- Informs social order and vice versa
- When people classify, human assumptions and judgments enter into data,
with or without being noticed
Cases:
- Bettina Wulff and Google autocomplete
- Risk and vulnerability assessment algorithms
- Content moderation; Designing ML for identifying and eliminating hate
speech in social media
HCE Toolkit: Co-production - correct answer-Technology and society are
mutually constitutive, or, in other words, they depend on one another for the
forms they assume: technology makes society what it is, and society makes
technology what it is
Cases:
- Ideas of privacy co-produced with social media platforms
- Statistical tools are co-produced with the formation of the nation-state
- Ethical codes are co-produced with professions
,- Labor conditions in the datafied world are co-produced with technologies of
surveillance
HCE Toolkit: Expertise - correct answer-Skill or knowledge in a domain
- Technical experts are institutionalized and valorized in societies
(trust/authority/power)
Cases:
- COMPAS algorithm and the expertise of the judge
- Value of transparency in algorithmic systems and necessary expertise to be
able to engage it
- Cumbrian sheep farmers
- Climate science
- Risk management; work of regulatory agencies
- Tech workplace, expertise and gender
HCE Toolkit: Hybridity - correct answer-Entities or systems composed of
heterogeneous elements
- Technologies are layered upon bodies and spaces in ways that are messy,
accidental, piecemeal, resulting in "landscapes" that are part new, part old
Cases:
- Smart cities (the way in which data is intertwined into the fabric of the city)
- Cyborg, or the ways in which people incorporate technologies into their ways
of doing and being (how we think about ourselves and how we perform certain
care of the self, e.g. health, work) ~ Pilot, nuclear power plant operator,
self-tracking
HCE Toolkit: Narratives - correct answer-Stories in time that express and
explain things that matter to people: who they are, how the world is, what
needs to be done, what futures are possible, desirable, or inevitable
- Technology shapes and is shaped by narratives that are at-large in society
HCE Toolkit: Identity/Positionality - correct answer-Life-shaping and socially
conditioned aspects of selfhood (gender, race, class, disability status, income,
immigration status, etc)
- Identity is not only about how you see yourself but also how society sees and
treats you (positionality). Identity is co-produced with technology
Cases:
, - Disparate impact of algorithms on different identities (facial recognition
technologies; "Gaydar"; predictive policing)
- Social media activism as a component in the civil rights struggle for the
recognition and rights for people with particular identities
- Self-tracking technologies built around particular concept of identity
(self-aware, efficient)
HCE Toolkit: Institutions - correct answer-Informal customs, norms and
practices or formal laws and organizations that support and generate forms of
social order (institution of marriage, economic or legal system, courts and
schools)
Cases:
- Role of private data corporations in policing (e.g. Palantir)
- Use of algorithms in the courtroom
- Social media and the public sphere
HCE Toolkit: Labor - correct answer-Physical or mental activity or exertion for
the sake of sustenance of life, and the conditions in which this activity takes
place and acquires value
Cases:
- "Gig-economy" -- driving, delivering, on-demand dog-walking, etc.
- Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
- Amazon warehouse
- Doctors and judges assisted by algorithms
- Imaginaries of robotics and the automation of certain types of labor
HCE Toolkit: Materiality - correct answer-The quality of being composed of
matter
Cases:
- TSA body scanners and privacy
- Carpenter v. United States and doctrine of search and seizure of phone v.
physical property
- Environmental externalities and energy resources of technology production
- Warehouse labor v. "seamless" delivery of on-line orders
- Infrastructure; Robert Moses' bridges
- Google Sidewalk Labs
- "Clean tech"
HCE Toolkit: Agency - correct answer-The ability or capacity to act or exert
power
- Technology allows people to perceive and exert some degree of control over
their sociotechnical relations
Cases:
- Algorithmic decision-making (COMPAS, Gig economy laborers)
- Real-time interplay of human and mechanical agency (autonomous vehicles,
pilots)
- Patients tracking their health through data apps and devices
- Google Walkout
- Disruptive innovation and the tech entrepreneur agent
HCE Toolkit: Classification - correct answer-Implicit and explicit social
organization of beings and knowledge into discrete categories governed by
identifiable principles
- Societies produce knowledge and do work (with technologies) by sorting,
ordering, and classifying phenomena
- Informs social order and vice versa
- When people classify, human assumptions and judgments enter into data,
with or without being noticed
Cases:
- Bettina Wulff and Google autocomplete
- Risk and vulnerability assessment algorithms
- Content moderation; Designing ML for identifying and eliminating hate
speech in social media
HCE Toolkit: Co-production - correct answer-Technology and society are
mutually constitutive, or, in other words, they depend on one another for the
forms they assume: technology makes society what it is, and society makes
technology what it is
Cases:
- Ideas of privacy co-produced with social media platforms
- Statistical tools are co-produced with the formation of the nation-state
- Ethical codes are co-produced with professions
,- Labor conditions in the datafied world are co-produced with technologies of
surveillance
HCE Toolkit: Expertise - correct answer-Skill or knowledge in a domain
- Technical experts are institutionalized and valorized in societies
(trust/authority/power)
Cases:
- COMPAS algorithm and the expertise of the judge
- Value of transparency in algorithmic systems and necessary expertise to be
able to engage it
- Cumbrian sheep farmers
- Climate science
- Risk management; work of regulatory agencies
- Tech workplace, expertise and gender
HCE Toolkit: Hybridity - correct answer-Entities or systems composed of
heterogeneous elements
- Technologies are layered upon bodies and spaces in ways that are messy,
accidental, piecemeal, resulting in "landscapes" that are part new, part old
Cases:
- Smart cities (the way in which data is intertwined into the fabric of the city)
- Cyborg, or the ways in which people incorporate technologies into their ways
of doing and being (how we think about ourselves and how we perform certain
care of the self, e.g. health, work) ~ Pilot, nuclear power plant operator,
self-tracking
HCE Toolkit: Narratives - correct answer-Stories in time that express and
explain things that matter to people: who they are, how the world is, what
needs to be done, what futures are possible, desirable, or inevitable
- Technology shapes and is shaped by narratives that are at-large in society
HCE Toolkit: Identity/Positionality - correct answer-Life-shaping and socially
conditioned aspects of selfhood (gender, race, class, disability status, income,
immigration status, etc)
- Identity is not only about how you see yourself but also how society sees and
treats you (positionality). Identity is co-produced with technology
Cases:
, - Disparate impact of algorithms on different identities (facial recognition
technologies; "Gaydar"; predictive policing)
- Social media activism as a component in the civil rights struggle for the
recognition and rights for people with particular identities
- Self-tracking technologies built around particular concept of identity
(self-aware, efficient)
HCE Toolkit: Institutions - correct answer-Informal customs, norms and
practices or formal laws and organizations that support and generate forms of
social order (institution of marriage, economic or legal system, courts and
schools)
Cases:
- Role of private data corporations in policing (e.g. Palantir)
- Use of algorithms in the courtroom
- Social media and the public sphere
HCE Toolkit: Labor - correct answer-Physical or mental activity or exertion for
the sake of sustenance of life, and the conditions in which this activity takes
place and acquires value
Cases:
- "Gig-economy" -- driving, delivering, on-demand dog-walking, etc.
- Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
- Amazon warehouse
- Doctors and judges assisted by algorithms
- Imaginaries of robotics and the automation of certain types of labor
HCE Toolkit: Materiality - correct answer-The quality of being composed of
matter
Cases:
- TSA body scanners and privacy
- Carpenter v. United States and doctrine of search and seizure of phone v.
physical property
- Environmental externalities and energy resources of technology production
- Warehouse labor v. "seamless" delivery of on-line orders
- Infrastructure; Robert Moses' bridges
- Google Sidewalk Labs
- "Clean tech"
