-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
/
index.html
316 lines (257 loc) · 16.2 KB
/
index.html
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
<html>
<head>
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes">
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black-translucent">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<link href="node_modules/reveal.js/css/reset.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"></link>
<link href="node_modules/reveal.js/css/reveal.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"></link>
<link href="node_modules/reveal.js/css/theme/black.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" id="theme">
<!-- Theme used for syntax highlighting of code -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="node_modules/reveal.js/lib/css/monokai.css">
</head>
<body>
<div class="reveal">
<div class="slides">
<!-- Begin slide 1 -->
<section>
<h2>Code in Our Society:</h2>
<h3>Informatics of Domination</h3>
<div>
<p>Presenter: <em>Jess Tran</em></p>
<p>Supervisor: <em>Elizabeth Patitsas</em></p>
<p>@ McGill University</p>
</div>
<aside class="notes">
Hi everyone, my name is Jess. I'm an undergraduate in CS at McGill University under the supervision of Elizabeth Patitsas. This is my first conference talk. Today I will be talking about Code and Software within our society, using Donna Haraway's articulation of the informatics of domination.
</aside>
</section>
<!-- End slide 1 -->
<!-- Begin slide 2 -->
<section>
<h2>Land Acknowledgement</h2>
<aside class="notes">
I wanted to begin my presentation with a land acknowledgement. As a settler in North America, in Canada in particular, I realized with the more research I did, how little I understood about the United States and Lousiana's relationship with Indigenious territories.
Nevertheless, I do want to take the time to acknowledge the original custodians of the land and waters we call New Orleans were not European, but the Indigenous people of many tribes, Chitimacha, Atakapa, Caddo, Choctaw, Houma, Natchez, and Tunica; only one of which, Chitimacha is recognized ferdally.
All the tribes met here on this land and called it Bulbancha, or "the place of many tongues".
I call attention to this with mind that land acknowledgments often raise concerns about being nominal, and do not necessarily indicate a deep commitment to restoration of indigenous stewardship over the land. However, I hope that by doing so, to bridge the past and the present, in order for us all to become a greater agent of the future.
</aside>
</section>
<!-- End slide 2 -->
<!-- Begin slide 3 -->
<section>
<h2>Frameworks</h2>
<ul>
<li>Donna Haraway</li>
<li>Queer Theory</li>
<li>Eduoard Glissant: Right to Opacity</li>
</ul>
<aside class="notes">
On to my presentation. So, I will be explaining a little bit more about Haraway in a while, but in conjunction with that I'll also be using queer theory and Eduoard Glissant's right to opacity.
</aside>
</section>
<!-- End slide 3 -->
<!-- Begin slide 4 -->
<section>
<section>
<h2>Queering: A Verb</h2>
<aside class="notes">
I assume most of you in the audience have encountered or recognize queering as a tool in your own research or reading. But since I'm the first panelist of today, I just want to contextualize what I mean I when I use this word: which is a tool to interrogate binaries.
</aside>
</section>
<section>
<h5>Sexuality:</h5>
<p class="fragment">homosexuality/heterosexuality</p>
<aside class="notes">
In particular, binaries that set up a hegemonic perspective to one that has been marginalized.
For example, at its origin, queerness was conceptualized to expand upon and make to be less stigmatized the term, homosexual.
</aside>
</section>
<section>
<h5>And Science ...?</h5>
<p class="fragment">natural/artificial</p>
<p class="fragment">past/future</p>
<p class="fragment">white/non-white</p>
<aside class="notes">
But this perspective and tooling can be re-purposed to more than just sexuality. Much more recent literature focuses on how it can be done within the sciences.
Queering now is used to de-normalize what is often normal, or to examine closely what makes a subject morally wrong, as opposed to its opposition; so as to discover, or reveal, what was hidden but obfuscated.
</aside>
</section>
</section>
<!-- End Slide 4 -->
<!-- Begin slide 5 -->
<section data-markdown>
<textarea data-template>
## Informatics of Domination
The <span style="text-decoration: underline">informatics of domination</span> is a term to represent the "white capitalist imperialist patriarchy in its contemporary late versions" (Haraway, 2006).
<aside class="notes">
Donna Haraway famously in her body of work interrogates the natural vs artifical, through the construction of each she places an emphasis on the science that has manifested this binary and argues that is done through cybernetics. This system of power structures is one she deems to be the "informatics of domination".
Nevertheless, she fails to recognize the importance of abled-bodiedness and heteronormative standards that also have come to shape society, so I've made up my own version of this for the rest of the presentation.
</aside>
</textarea>
</section>
<section data-markdown>
<textarea data-template>
## Informatics of Domination
The <span style="text-decoration: underline">informatics of domination</span> is a term to represent the "<strong><em>white</em></strong> <span style="color:yellow"> ableist heteronormative</span> capitalist imperialist patriarchy in its contemporary late versions" (Haraway, 2006).
<aside class="notes">
Moving forward, I will be presenting a collection of scholars whose work has focused on how aspects of code is part and parcel in the informatics of domination.
</aside>
</textarea>
</section>
<!-- End slide 5 -->
<!-- Begin slide 6 -->
<section>
<section>
<h2>1. Code as Race</h2>
<aside class="notes">
I'll begin with code in race.
Queer theory and critical race theory share familiar aspects in the realm of resistance. However, within STS it's easy to get by without mentioning race, in spite of our efforts toward an intersectional lens.
Nevertheless, I think it's important to consider how the basis of most technologies is constructed and outsourced at the low-paid or unpaid labour of people of colour.
</aside>
</section>
<section>
<ul>
<li>Between 1965 and 1975, 922 Navajo women were employed to work on circuit assembly in Shiprock, New Mexico (Nakamura, 2014)</li>
<li class="fragment">"Indian" women "have" an affinity toward textiles and craft</li>
<li class="fragment">Narrative obscures competitive capitalistic heart</li>
</ul>
<aside class="notes">
This story is constructed to justify this labour: propsensity to making intricate designs of circuitry due to cultural practices like beadwork. Navajo women were retroactively observed to have deft, nimble fingers, which has since been adopted to describe south and south east asian women labourers.
This narrative alludes to a personal connnection to the product, binding workers to their production by the notion of inherent talent; alhough the work remains to be procedural labour.
The uplifting narrative obscures the low pay, working conditions, and inital reasonings for hiring on Navajo land: low taxation. At its heart, a capitalistic venture.
In technology, another way in which obscuring happens is through modularity.
</aside>
</section>
<section>
<h2>UNIX principles</h2>
<ul>
<li class="fragment">"Modularity"; abstracts and obscures away complexity</li>
<li class="fragment">"Separation of Concerns"; each module is used for one thing only</li>
<li class="fragment">Reflects the identity politics which fractured solidarity between unionizing labour workers and black and POC activists (McPherson, 2012)</li>
</ul>
<aside class="notes">
During that same time period Bell Labs was conceiving of a set of rules that would be dogmatically followed by most programmers decades later, and to the present day. Those are the UNIX principles.
UNIX is an open source operating system that has now become the basis for most computers today. There are many principles, but today we will focus on just one: modularity and separation of concerns.
These two principles abstracts away much of the complexity of code, while separating and categorizing the intent of the snippets of code. McPherson also notices he development of this logic also occurs simultaneously when idenity politics began to overtake class consciousness: labour union workers and civil rights activists were working together, but slowly became divisive.
</aside>
</section>
<section>
<p>"We have to shake ourselves out of our small, field-based boxes so that we might take seriously the possibility that our own knowledge practices are normalized, modular, and black boxed in much the same way as the code we study in our work." (McPherson, 2012)</p>
<aside class="notes">
It is impossible to say that the logic of UNIX has become reflected in our actions and thoughts -- or merely it's a manifestation of its ethos.
But McPherson urges us to consider the tools we use and the logic that is embedded within their construction, materiality, as another entry-point for self-reflexivity.
</aside>
</section>
</section>
<!-- End slide 6 -->
<!-- Begin slide 7 -->
<section>
<section><h2>2. Code as Masculinity Contest Cultures (MCCs)</h2></section>
<section>
<ul>
<li>MCCs a culture in which dominance contests are the norm (Berdahl, 2018)</li>
<li class="fragment">MCCs describe open-source communities</li>
<li class="fragment">How "open" is open-source if only 1.5% of participants are women? (Nafus, 2011)</li>
<li class="fragment">
Belief in a moral liberal ideology / libertarian fantasy; minimizes gender differences
</li>
</ul>
<aside class="notes">
MCCs are a way to sociologically describe the culture which prioritizes hegemonic masculinity and masculine traits to be expressed in order to succeed in a social group.
- Rape jokes, aggressive comments and lack of support to new-comers to code.
- Often women are deferred to do "softer" work such as writing documentation, rather than writing code. Mentorship for women were often seen as a dating opportunity or free emotional labour.
What is observed to happen in open-source communities, is believed to be a part of hte larger ideologies of tech communities, which is a belief in moreal liberal ideologies; one which is post-gender.
</aside>
</section>
</section>
<!-- End slide 7 -->
<!-- Begin slide 8 -->
<section>
<section><h2>3. Society as Code</h2></section>
<aside class="notes">
Finally, as benevolent as websites and technology present themselves, we all know it's just advertisement.
</aside>
<section>
<ul>
<li>Algorithms take in interactions through social media sites in order to coalesce data and habits to sell to advertisers</li>
<li class="fragment">Hidden violence of reifying gender</li>
<li class="fragment">Inaccessibility of most websites</li>
</ul>
<aside class="notes">
Hidden violences being done in present time, in the past, geographically around the world by technology. For example, sites like Facebook and Pinterest present a custom gender field, but end up reifying whatever gender is input through your interactions with it's websites in order to sell targetted advertisement as male or female.
</aside>
</section>
</section>
<!-- End slide 8 -->
<!-- Begin slide 9 -->
<section>
<section><h2>Cybernetics and Opacity</h2></section>
<section>
<h2>Haraway's Cybernetics</h2>
<ul>
<li class="fragment">Communication = Control</li>
<li class="fragment">Obscures the relations of domination</li>
<li class="fragment">"Obscures the competitive bedrock of captialism with with phenomena like altruism and liberal corporate responsbility" (Haraway, 1991)</li>
<li class="fragment">Software systems is a "soft control" (Gaboury, 2018)</li>
</ul>
<aside class="notes">
Haraway argues that cybernetics is akin to control. It obscures the controlling forces that render us powerless; sometimes by obscuring the relationships we have to our product, or by covering it up with liberal idealogies.
We often speak of intersectionality in the context of those who are oppressed. But Haraway urges us also to consider how intersectionality exists also in those who are oppressors.
For Haraway, the informatics of domination is a part of the technology within cybernetics which controls and obscures. How software contributes to that is an important dialogue, and Gaboury argues, in the Foucaldian sense, is a enactment of a "soft control",
When we reveal these aspects of code through the lens of queerness we are offered a way to realize our position in relation with the technology and what power structures they bind us to.
</aside>
</section>
<section>
<h2>Glissant's Right to Opacity</h2>
<ul>
<li class="fragment">Obscurity =/= Opacity</li>
<li class="fragment">"Understanding" people is premised on transparency which requires an ideal measurements; reductive</li>
<li class="fragment">Opacity = "an irreducible singularity" (Glissant, 1997)</li>
<li class="fragment">"[T]he idea of totality alone is an obstacle to totality." (Glissant, 1997)</li>
</ul>
<aside class="notes">
When we encounter obscurity, it is not the same as opacity.
Thus far we have agreed to the theory of differences; accepting differences has been important to the recognition of minorities, but is premised on understanding which inevitably breaks a subject down, and recontructs them within my own finite worldview and measurement.
Glissant then, insists on Opacity, which is coming to see and hold everything for what it is, without reduction; "an irreducible singularity".
How can we begin to understand when we are using scales and measures in order to extract and categorize each horror? each triumph? each human body?
Glissant brings this up in the context of the trans-atlantic slave trade, when each human body was measured by their strength, child for their potential and sold for a calculated cost.
For Glissant, the philosophy of opacity, is not to understand what to measure, but to bare witness to the relations of the whole.
</aside>
</section>
<section>
<p>"Only by understanding that it is impossible to reduce anyone, no matter who, to a truth [they] would not have generated on [their] own. That is, within the opacity of [their] time and place. [...]This same opacity is also the force that drives every community." (Glissant, 1997)</p>
<aside class="notes">
Glissant's right to opacity is then a consciousness that weaves darkness with lightness. It accepts all that we cannot accept and understand, and in a queer context, allows one to refuse to be defined and categorized. To some scholars, this opacity is a place of resistance, and must be preserved inside our technical systems.
</aside>
</section>
</section>
<!-- End slide 9 -->
<!-- Begin slide 10 -->
<section>
<h2>Take-aways</h2>
<ul>
<li class="fragment">There are secret bad things about code</li>
<li class="fragment">
Queer Theory + Haraway + Glissant can help de-obscure the secret bad things about code
</li>
<li class="fragment">
But we will never fully understand it, and that's ok; knowing is an agential force
</li>
</ul>
<!-- TODO -->
<aside class="notes">
</aside>
</section>
<!-- End slide 10 -->
<!-- Begin slide 11 -->
<section>
<h2>Thank you for listening.</h2>
<p>Slides and further reading available @ <a>github.com/jalafel/4S</a></p>
</section>
<!-- End slide 11 -->
</div>
</div>
</body>
<script src="node_modules/reveal.js/js/reveal.js"></script>
<script src="main.js"></script>
</html>