After the Social Dilemma

I was invited to a group that wanted to watch then discuss the Social Dilemma. Considering my reading and the researchers I’ve been following, reading articles and listening to talks from for over a year now, I heard early that most of the [amazing][mostly Black][mostly women] folks I follow were left out in a movie that gave most of the air time to white men from the industry pretending they are powerless in the face of what they created aaand was clear pretty quickly I didn’t need to see this film. The discussion group invitation changed my plan.

“And it can also be seen in how engineers talk about or reckon with their own power in ‘addicting’ consumers to technology, while undercutting the power and worth of the workers, organizations, and users that actually create the value for these companies.

“More specifically, however, the phrase ‘against platform determinism’ is intended to turn our attention to the range of possible interactions or relationships with platforms that mediate, structure, or resist platform power — interactions that are typically undervalued in existing literature on platforms yet have already been taking place in many communities.” – Against Platform Determinism @ https://points.datasociety.net/against-platform-determinism-899acdf88a3d

After the discussion, I put together this list of resources for folks to dive into next:
“There’s this Shoshana Zuboff video, for those that want to listen to her explain rather than pick up The Age of Surveillance Capitalism right away. People to follow include Safiya Umoja Noble (who just did this talk that is only online until the end of this week), Ruha Benjamin, Meredith Broussard, Joy Buolamwini, Charlton McIlwain, and Tressie Cottom (who has an article in this season’s Dissent). Here’s Sasha Costanza-Chock’s book Design Justice, free online. And here’s a video series that covers the ideas (like the “god effect” in how people discuss AI and research) from the book Data Feminism, which is less about social media and more about learning to be critical consumers of information // responsible producers-keepers-sharers of knowledge. Data & Society has a cool newsletter.”

Obviously there’s much more. We’ll see if anyone asks for a part 2…