Thread by @bjpeters

Thread on #computerfire contributors (my summaries).



Why is tech smoldering? What is to be done?



Read Your Computer is on Fire: new book launch & readings TOMORROW, Tuesday March 9, 2021 at 5 pm EST. Register: mitpress.mit.edu/books/your-com…


1/ Happy IntWomen'sDay!

In “the Cloud is a Factory” @nensmenger launches the first section “nothing is virtual” with the cloud being coal-powered: Amazon, like Sears before it, organizes trust, bodies, and matter across the global carbon chains that is computing.



2/ #cloudfactory #computerfire

In “Your AI is a Human” @ubiquity75 powers through how minimum-wage laborers stand in, unacknowledged, for almost every promise of AI to date. Smart algorithms, commercial content moderation, social media? Don’t be fooled: tech is people.



3/ #AIhuman #computerfire

In “Network is Not a Network” @bjpeters critiques networks behave as designed. As the early histories of Soviet, Chilean, and American networks show, no one, now or then, knows what a network is for. Trust in design values has sped surveillance+.



4/ #Nyetwork #computerfire

In “The Internet will be Decolonized” @techno_kavi shows through globally uneven imaginaries, images, infrastructures how the internet as a “series of tubes” might just convey the mucky, material consequences of colonialism



5/ #netdecolonize #computerfire

In “Capture is Pleasure” @MitaliThakor attends to dualed "apprehensions": how the policing of child pornography compels a reckoning with the vulnerabilities of bodies and the pleasures of being seen in an age of machine vision.



6/ #capturepleasure #computerfire

In “Sexism is a Feature, Not a Bug” @histoftech launches “this is an emergency” with how the Brits lost the computer tech race with deliberately sexist and regressive hiring, management, and labor practices. Sexism is our tech history.



7/ #sexismnotbug #computerfire

In “Gender is a Corporate Tool” Corinna Schlombs shows that your company does not love you, no matter how it may call you family. Paternalistic histories of IBM and “Mr. and Mrs. Watson" recast progressive tech labor politics today.



8/ #gendercorporatetool #computerfire

In “Siri Disciplines” @halcyon_L shows that voice-assistance tech cannot hear your anger. Through an analysis of the exclusionary English-language empire, she shows how Siri is among the newest (and oldest) auditoriums for discrimination.



9/ #siridisciplines #computerfire

In “Your Robot isn’t Neutral” @safiyanoble tackles the myriad popular promises of neutral robots and their cover for spreading sexism, racism, dirty data, and tougher realities. She calls for a humane and human-oriented future of robotics.



10/ #robotnotneutral #computerfire

In “Broken is Word” @andrealstanton reverse engineers why it took a century of gun manufacturers, patents, pathologies for Word to work in Arabic: “it is not Arabic that is the problem, but thinking of Arabic script as the problem is."



11/ #brokenword #computerfire

In “You Can’t Make Games about Much” @noahwf shows how skins, playable models, and operational logics have done little to move gaming beyond third-string monopolists, second-world designers, and first-person soldiers. Gaming, be better.



12/ #gamesnotaboutmuch #computerfire

In “Coding is Not Empowerment” @JanetAbbateVT launches “where will the fire spread”: K-12 coding empowerment campaigns are solving the wrong problem. CS remains exclusionary because of hiring, not talent supply. Employ a world of coders.

13/ #codingnotpower #computerfire

In “Source Code Isn’t” Ben Allen charts the maze of coding back to the Thompson hack: source code is anything but the source. Why trust programming—if not for the very code whose vulnerabilities he shows?



14/ #sourcecodeisnt #computerfire

In “Skills Will Not Set You Free” @SreelaSarkar delivers a master class in IT labor resistance, describing how Muslim women in Seelampur resist the entrapping promise of skills at the workplace and on the streets.



15/ #skillsnotpower #computerfire

In “Platforms are Infrastructures on Fire” @avastmachine reveals through three African tech platforms that no tech platform is long for this world. Often built to break, neoliberal platforms risk torching supporting infrastructures.



16/ #platformsonfire #computerfire

In “Typing is Dead” @tsmullaney ends typing and radically rethinks what it could be. QWERTY, he shows, is an enduring attempt at getting Anglo expression, race, and writing fundamentally wrong.



17/ #typingdead #computerfire

For readings, intros, and afterwords by @tommullaney, @histoftech, @techno_kavi, @bjpeters, and others, register for tomorrow’s launch:

T March 9, 2021 at 5 pm EST.

us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regist…



@mitp bookshelf:
mitpress.mit.edu/books/your-com…


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Here’s the event registration link, if you or your students are interested tomorrow, Tuesday March 9, 5 pm EST:
us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regist…

@threadreaderapp unroll

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