Book Launch and Seminar: Resisting AI
Nov
17
4:00 PM16:00

Book Launch and Seminar: Resisting AI

  • Physics Building, University of Bristol (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Dr Dan McQuillan (Goldsmiths)

(HYBRID - Online/Physics Building 1.11 Tyndall Lecture Theatre)

In this talk I will argue that, rather than being a generalisable solution to complex problems or a precursor to actual intelligence, contemporary AI is a divisive apparatus that limits people’s life chances and embeds a fascistic logic into social solutions. I will suggest that, by refusing AI, we can replace algorithmic states of exception with feminist relationality and sustainable structures of commonisation.

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Seminar: Breaking Digital Ties
Oct
13
4:00 PM16:00

Seminar: Breaking Digital Ties

  • Enderby Lecture Theatre, Physics Building (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Prof Nicholas John (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

(In Person/Physics B16/17, Enderby Lecture Theatre)

Online spaces provide opportunities for creating ties with other people, allowing to us to communicate and share content with them. Sometimes, though, we wish to break some of these ties; we wish not only to friend and to follow, but to unfriend and unfollow as well. In this talk, I present the many features for online interpersonal disconnectivity, and show how have they developed over time. […] Read More

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Book Launch: Media and Management
May
25
4:00 PM16:00

Book Launch: Media and Management

Rutvica Andrijasevic (University of Bristol)

(Bristol Digital Futures Institute, Room G.02)

Jointly organised with the Perspectives on Work and Global Political Economy Faculty Research Groups, the event provides the opportunity to discuss the book with Rutvica and hear reflections from colleagues. Pizza and refreshments will be provided. […] Read More

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Public Lecture: Digital Touch Futures
May
12
4:00 PM16:00

Public Lecture: Digital Touch Futures

Professor Carey Jewitt (University College London)

(In Person/Priory Road Complex F Block, Room 4F2)

Touch matters. It is fundamental to how we experience and know ourselves, others and the world, and central to how we communicate. Touch is at the vanguard of advances in digital communication technologies and heralds a move beyond ‘ways of seeing’ to embrace ‘ways of feeling’. In this talk, I will map the main contexts where touch is centre-place, and explore how touch is being conceptualised in the realm of the digital. […] Read More

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Call for Contributions: Digital Technologies in the COVID-19 crisis
May
11
to May 31

Call for Contributions: Digital Technologies in the COVID-19 crisis

Deadline: 31/05/2020

Questions about digital technologies have never been far from the headlines during the current COVID-19 crisis. Whether it is online education, zoom meetings or contact tracing apps interest in digital technologies has been turbocharged by the crisis. Whilst many of us are relying more on digital technologies to ‘get us through’ the crisis, digital inequalities have been laid bare as the significance and consequences of not having effective access to digital technologies become all to clear. Meanwhile, the social, political, and economic relations that shape digital innovation have are undergoing a transformation. Whether it is the massive switch to online learning, large tech companies sharing their proprietary data with governments or call centre workers working from home: things that were not possible before COVID-19 now seem to be possible, for good and not so good. Never were the politics of digital technologies more important.

As the Digital Societies Group there is a great deal we can and should say about this! And we can use the blog as a means for rapid response.  How can we strengthen critical engagement? What can we do to re-thing and re-create digital futures?

We welcome contributions of the following kinds:

Social Technologies: We are looking for short texts (up to 500 words) on the social implications and potential of (mis)using existing technologies. Here, technology is understood in a broader sense, focusing on digital communication technologies, but not excluding other kinds of physical/digital devices, tricks, and hacks that people do to alleviate the impacts of the current crisis, and even hint towards more desirable and just futures.

Tales from Below: 800-word testimonies of how you are experiencing the COVID-19 crisis. Contributors are free to focus on a topic of their own interest, from the everyday life, to struggles in the workplace and the home, to expressing deeper feelings about the present and the future. The call is open to everyone, and we particularly welcome contributions from marginal and unrepresented individuals and communities. Texts may be anonymised if you wish.

Digital Futures: In this section we are asking for creative interventions that reflect on our accelerating times, visualize and critique opaque aspects of technological values and usages, and aspire towards more responsible technologies in more equitable societies. (Up to 1000 words)

Please send your articles and artwork at susan.halford@bristol.ac.uk until 31/05/2020

 
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Public Lecture: The Costs of Connection
Mar
11
5:00 PM17:00

Public Lecture: The Costs of Connection

Professor Nick Couldry (London School of Economics) and Professor Ulises Mejias (State University of New York, College at Oswego)

Jointly organized with the Perspectives on Work Faculty Research Group

We are told that progress requires human beings to be connected, and that science, medicine and much else that is good demands the kind massive data collection only possible if every thing and person are continuously connected. But connection, and the continuous surveillance that connection makes possible, usher in an era of neocolonial appropriation. In this new era, social life becomes a direct input to capitalist production, and data – the data collected and processed when we are connected – is the means for this transformation. Hence the need to start counting the costs of connection.

Fry Building G.10LT. Woodlands Road, University of Bristol.

 

A profound exploration of how the ceaseless extraction of information about our intimate lives is remaking both global markets and our very selves. The Costs of Connection represents an enormous step forward in our collective understanding of capitalism’s current stage, a stage in which the final colonial input is the raw data of human life. Challenging, urgent and bracingly original. 

— Naomi Klein, Gloria Steinem Chair of Media, Culture and Feminist Studies, Rutgers University




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Public Lecture: International comparisons of work in the digital age
Feb
5
5:00 PM17:00

Public Lecture: International comparisons of work in the digital age

Professor Jacqueline O’Reilly (University of Sussex)

Jointly organized with the Perspectives on Work Faculty Research Group

While global in nature, the fourth industrial revolution is evidently moving at different speeds through different national contexts. In this talk Jacqueline O’Reilly will draw on evidence from a major new publication ‘Work in the Digital Age’ to examine how countries vary in the extent and variety of digital transformation. This will examine the implications for comparative research and the critical policy concerns arising from these developments. 

Peel Lecture Theatre, School of Geographical Sciences, University Road, University of Bristol.

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