I am currently attending the annual meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science in Montreal. Earlier today I had the pleasure of participating on a panel I co-organized with Anders Albrechtslund titled, "Ways Knowing Everything About Each Other:…
Category: Values In Design
Understanding how ethical values are embedded in technology, and working to ensure values are considered in technology design practices.
How Google Blew It with Street View
As I just mentioned, Google recently announced plans to blur or otherwise obscure people's faces in the Canadian version of the Street View product. After a brief conversation with my colleague Chris Hoofnagle, I've come to realize that in their…
Privacy and Quaero’s Quest for the Perfect Search Engine: Threats and Opportunities
I'm in Maastricht today participating in the "Forum on Quaero: A public think tank on the politics of the search engine." In my talk, "Privacy and Quaero's Quest for the Perfect Search Engine: Threats and Opportunities," I call on the…
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Bill McGeveran on Facebook, Context, and Privacy
William McGeveran, a professor at University of Minnesota Law School, points to this troubling story about a Florida State professor who made each student read aloud his/her Facebook profie, which noted how "the girls [sic] whose hobby was “being slutty”…
Completion
I’m pleased to announce that I have successfully defended my dissertation, “The Quest for the Perfect Search Engine: Values, Technical Design, and the Flow of Personal Information in Spheres of Mobility.” Thanks to everyone for their help and support. (blogging…
Anti-Sit Technologies
Those familiar with my work know I'm interested in how technologies can embody values, or more specifically, how the design of technologies bears directly and systematically on the realization – or suppression – of social, ethical, and political values, such…
Libraries vs. Bookstores vs. Google
Library Juice posts a wonderful essay by Tracy Nectoux, a library student at UIUC, who was assigned to visit a bookstore and compare the atmosphere to a library’s atmosphere. I think it's helpful to take the comparison one step further…
So, what exactly is Media Ecology? (video)
A video honoring the 5th Anniversary of the Media Ecology Association has been posted to YouTube, featuring choice clips of (roughly in order of appearance) Camile Paglila, Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman (including his famous stint on Comedy Central's "Daily Show"),…
Google: “Did You Mean: ‘He Invented’?”
Philipp Lenssen points out that when you search Google for "she invented," on the results page you are asked "Did you mean 'he invented'?" There has been lots of discussion on this seemingly misogynistic "correction" that Google provides, and those…
Sherry Turkle: Can You Hear Me Now?
Sherry Turkle has an excellent essay in Forbes about the alienating consequences of the digital revolution. (She gave a related talk for the McLuhan Lecture at NYU a few months ago). Her thesis is that "Thanks to technology, people have…

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