Soon!! 9th annual Computing within Limits Workshop (LIMITS‘23). Virtual & free. June 14 + 15, 2023.

The LIMITS workshop concerns the role of computing in human societies situated in a world of limits. As an interdisciplinary group we seek to reshape the computing research agenda, grounded by an awareness that contemporary computing research is intertwined with ecological limits.

Registration: https://www.kth.se/form/6447d677775d3d91efc671e7
Schedule:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kNRd1VRwHKw66SyKfpTfW2HFElmLd04nKe9VeIIl5YU/edit#
Home: https://computingwithinlimits.org/2023/ @vardi

Climate Scientists Leave Twitter For Mastodon

So, it is possible for a group to make the collective decision to leave Twitter. Scientists "suffering insults and mass-spam are abandoning Twitter," and setting up shop on Mastodon.

Climate scientists flee Twitter as hostility surges >>> https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230524-climate-scientists-flee-twitter-as-hostility-surges

"Glaciologist @Ruth_Mottram had more than 10,000 followers on Twitter but left in February and joined an alternative scientists' forum powered by Mastodon."

1/

#twittermigration #climate

When engaging with theorists and computational modelers, be aware that the term "system" often refers to the model/theory and not the phenomenon being modeled.

This is both irritating and somewhat unavoidable, but worth paying careful attention to.

Ohhh, Rest In Probability Ian Hacking, who passed away yesterday aged 87 - one of the absolute best historian/philosophers of probability, statistics, mental illness and of science in general, his new Introduction to the 50th Anniversary Edition of Thomas Kuhn's classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is especially worth reading.
#STS
#HistoryOfScience
#SocialConstruction
#ThomasKuhn
#Philosophy

https://dailynous.com/2023/05/10/ian-hacking-1936-2023/

@Richard_Hull

A nice note on Ian Hacking posted at the Chronicle of higher ed.

(paywalled -- but most univ.libraries grant access -- or ping me and i'll send it)

https://www-chronicle-com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/newsletter/the-review/2023-05-15

🗣 A reminder that the call for papers for the workshop "Global Infrastructures: The Production of the Modern World", co-organised by the IHC and the Università di Bologna, will end on 20 April.

The workshop intends to promote a collective investigation of the origins and development of global infrastructures and will take place in Bologna on 9 June.

ℹ https://bit.ly/40ei4tj

@histodons
#histodons #infrastructures #GlobalHistory #Capitalism #EconomicHistory

Now that we've had some time to get to know the Mastodon world, it's time for a proper #introduction !

We are the "Critical Big Data and Algorithmic Literacy Network" - an international, interdisciplinary network of researchers & practitioners who are interested in critical #education about #data & #datafication.

Our projects include:
- a database for online educational resources about data
- a (German) glossary on terms around digital sovereignty
- a debate series on #criticaldataliteracy

You can find these resources & more information on our network on our website: https://www.bigdataliteracy.net/

Our next project is a online event series on the practice-side of critical data literacy: different educators and creators of online resources will present & discuss their best practice insights on how to implement critical data literacy.

We look forward to connecting with other scholars & practitioners on here! If you're interested in #criticaldataliteracy , feel free to reach out!

Honestly, how many of us critical internet researchers are Canadian?

Is there something about growing up in liberal, ‘multicultural’ Canada of the 80s-90s; coming south as part of the ‘Brain Drain’; finding ourselves Through the Looking Glass in which things seem the same on the surface but are drastically different beneath; sounding like an insider but being an outsider; knowing things *can* be different and still functional— that plays into our critiques of the technical status quo?

I have received an RR decision which includes the phrase ‘brilliantly written’ among more challenging but fair feedback. I realise this is the only phrase that I’m really scanning for in reviews (which obviously can only be read at all with eyelids ajar). I’m like ok ok but what about the writing? I’m not sure I’m suited to academia.

@allartmarkets

“thinly evidenced” yeah yeah yeah

“deep contradictions” uhuh.

“The text does not flow” Nooo!

I think that ethics, responsibility, and related concepts should be part of every computing class! Thread to share insights and resources from the Embedded Ethics conference at Stanford today. (1) https://hai.stanford.edu/events/embedded-ethics-conference-strategies-teaching-responsible-computing-within-computer-science

Tomorrow, March 8, several groups are leading a strike against the Big Tech Cloud. This feminist day of action should inspire us to slow down, compute consciously and conscientiously, remember the cloud is material and composed of labor and parts, and take notice of how often we invoke The Cloud in our daily lives.

https://titipi.org/8m/

You can do it, too! Watch this space for cloud opt out tips coming your way. And remember— there is no cloud, it’s just someone else’s computer.

#divest

in case useful for anyone teaching or learning data journalism this semester, here are some resources and links that we share with our students at @kingsdh:

https://jwyg.github.io/awesome-data-journalism/

#datapractices #datajournalism #ddj #datastudies #criticaldatapractice #criticaldatastudies #journalism #journodon #commodon

Please read this profile of @emilymbender and her work right now. Take special heed in reading the positions of the Stanford linguist Manning, and his compromised (financial, etc.) stake. Like others in AI, fundamental/core concepts’ definitions elude him. This isn’t because he and others are stupid. It’s because they aren’t interested in/capable of doing the hard work of wrestling with those human questions, preferring to leapfrog to application. That’s not incidental.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-chatbots-emily-m-bender.html

As an antidote to the Eric Schmidt x Henry Kissinger x Dan Huttenlocher ChatGPT hyping oped currently circulating, I offer #LucySuchman and my review of the trio's AI hyping book

https://prospect.org/culture/books/myth-of-artificial-intelligence-kissinger-schmidt-huttenlocher/

It's a new pub day! My colleagues in the Sustainable Subseas Network project and I tackle a big question in this one: what is the carbon footprint of ICT? And what if we ultimately can't know the answer to that question? :OpenAccess:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20539517231158994

Here's a little thread with some highlights, 'cause gosh I'm proud of this thing! ⬇️

Henri #Bergson's surprisingly short CV which landed him a job at the prestigious Collège de France in 1900. Oh how things have changed

Good morning! ICYMI, published last night: "Evasion revealed all those enticing 'conveniences' as little more than an invented fiction. They were yet another ride in the theme park, one that made guests feel they were winning some invisible game, while losing their precious autonomy at the same time."

https://www.publicbooks.org/data-free-disney/

Starts today.

Please Boost! 📢

A ✨ compelling ✨ online #STS speaker series about Data archiving and Ecological consequences.

🙋 My talk in the series is on Feb22 🙋

“Across the Layers: Scientific Knowledge
Production, Planetary Resources, and Data Centres”: Nine one-hour
lectures over three week: Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. Join us for the
respective dates between 20.02 – 13.03 from 4-5 PM CET.

https://rustlab.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/across_layers/

Brought to you by the Rust lab folk at Ruhr University.