Corrupted Code: Three Perspectives on the Myth of Tech Neutrality ~ "........digital technologies are in and of themselves complicit with hegemonic ideologies......." ~ Three dynamic panelists tackle the idea that technology is not neutral—not simply because of who has access to it or how it is used, but because of how it is designed. March 8: among them is Dr. Ramon Amaro (who, for several days was DAI's amazing, thought-provoking guest respondent at our Kitchen in Berlin, back in the early summer of 2019).
Many mainstream critiques of the social impact of digital technology focus on its (mis-)applications. From the perspective of these critiques, social media, facial recognition, AI, and other tools are not inherently “bad”; rather, they are “neutral," and are simply being used in inappropriate or harmful ways. This panel of three interdisciplinary researchers working at the intersection of art, computation, and cultural criticism will focus on the alternative idea that How might our relationship to technology change if we understood its default settings to be bias, extraction, and other forms of harm? If tech’s lack of neutrality is in fact a feature, not a bug, can we use tech to address tech’s problems? Is it ethical to use existing tools, or do we need to build new ones altogether? These large and abstract questions will become concrete through the case studies provided by each panelist’s work, pointing towards different paths towards a more equitable future.
Curator, critic and art historian, Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan moderates this conversation with Eyebeam Alum and NY based Iranian-Kurdish artist, Morehshin Allahyari موره شین اللهیاری, engineer, sociologist, and cultural theorist, Dr. Ramon Amaro, and Indigenous computational media artist, Jon Corbett ᒍᐤᐣ ᒥᑫᐪ ᕒᐅᐯᕒᐟ ᑯᕒᐯᐟ ᓂᐟᓯᑯᓴᐣ.
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#TheFold is Eyebeam's member-driven series where a growing community of individuals empowers access to dynamic exchanges that look critically at society's complex relationship with technology to reveal innovative designs and hopeful imaginings from today's radically engaged practitioners.