Tag: data

Scripturient: To Dream Like A Human

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The world could always be otherwise than it is. Sometimes fate is only a failure of imagination. The trajectory of automation is not only uncertain, it is unwritten. The fundamental question is less about technical capacity than ethics, authority, and accountability: Who will create the future – and with what ends in mind?

In the latest instalment of ‘Scripturient’, my quarterly column for Information Professional magazine, I draw together comments from a few different thinkers on automation and art.

You can read ‘To Dream Like A Human’ here.

Scripturient: Data Ethicist Sam Nutt, London Office of Technology and Innovation

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“People want to discover the future together, and that future, for us, is always a shared one.”

From the pages of Information Professional magazine, my most recent “Scripturient” column, featuring Sam Nutt of the London Office of Technology & Innovation (LOTI) on “doing data ethically” – going beyond research and compliance to help “practically discover what the values are which should be driving how we use data: not my values, but those of the organisation, of the city, and of the residents we serve.”

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Scripturient Interview: Karen Levy, Road Scholar

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In the latest issue of Information Professional, my column ‘Scripturient’ features an interview with Cornell University’s Karen Levy. An assistant professor in the Department of Information Science, and associate member of the faculty of Cornell Law School, Karen researches how law and technology interact to regulate social life, with particular focus on social and organizational aspects of surveillance. We spoke as her new book Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance was being released in the UK. You can download a PDF of my Scripturient column featuring Karen here, and a transcript of our conversation is below.

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Scripturient: Computing Taste – Interview with Nick Seaver

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For the latest issue of Information Professional magazine, my Scripturient column features an interview with Nick Seaver, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Tufts University.

Nick’s new book Computing Taste uses ethnographic fieldwork to explore how the makers of music recommendation algorithms understand and go about their work – from product managers thinking about their relationship with users to scientists theorising the act of listening itself as a kind of data processing and engineers for whom the world of music is a geography to be cared for and controlled.

You can read the latest Scripturient column featuring Nick as a PDF download here, and there’s a full transcript of our conversation, digging even deeper into these issues and other elements of Nick’s research, below.

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