Category: Other Topics
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Automating Inequality: Virginia Eubanks Book Launch at Data & Society
What does it mean for public sector actors to implement algorithms to make public services to be more efficient? How are these systems experienced by the families and people who face the consequences? Speaking at the Data and Society Institute today is Virginia Eubanks, author of the new book Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile,…
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Getting serious about research ethics in computer science
Digital technology mediates our public and private lives. That makes computer science a powerful discipline, but it also means that ethical considerations are essential in the development of these technologies. Not all new developments may be welcomed by users, such as a patent application by Facebook that enables the company to identify their users’ emotions…
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Design Ethics for Gender-Based Violence and Safety Technologies
Authored (and organized) by Kate Sim and Ben Zevenbergen. Digital technologies are increasingly proposed as innovative solution to the problems and threats faced by vulnerable groups such as children, women, and LGBTQ people. However, there exists a structural lack of consideration for gender and power relations in the design of Internet technologies, as previously discussed…
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European authorities fine Google for search tactics
This week the European Commission (EC) announced that it is fining Google $2.7 billion for anti-competitive tactics in the company’s iconic search product. In this post I’ll unpack what’s going on here. I have some background on this topic. In 2011-12, when I was Chief Technologist at the FTC, the agency did a big investigation…
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Lessons of 2016 for U.S. Election Security
The 2016 election was one of the most eventful in U.S. history. We will be debating its consequences for a long time. For those of us who pay attention to the security and reliability of elections, the 2016 election teaches some important lessons. I’ll review some of them in this post. First, though, let’s review…
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Regulation and Anti-Regulation
[Hi, Freedom to Tinker readers. I’m back at Princeton, having completed my tour of duty as Deputy U.S. CTO, so I can resume writing here. I’ll start with some posts on specific topics, like the one below. As time goes on, I’ll have a lot more to say about what I learned. –Ed Felten] Politicians often…
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GIS Analysis as a Research Communication Tool
The power of geospatial analysis lies in the new ways it provides to look at datasets and the relations among them. It allows you to explore more nuanced questions and discover correlations previously hidden. Used properly, geographic information system (GIS) tools can increase the saliency of a policy issue by expressing your argument visually and…
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Announcing the Open Review Toolkit
I’m happy to announce the release of the Open Review Toolkit, open source software that enables you to convert your book manuscript into a website that can be used for Open Review. During the Open Review process everyone can read and annotate your manuscript, and you can collect valuable data to help launch your book.…
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Neophilia and Human Nature
In the spring of 2012, I attended the memorial service for John McCarthy, a computer science founding father, at an auditorium on the Stanford campus. Among the great and good anecdotes told about this great and good guy was the mention of how McCarthy, more or less in around 1961, invented time-sharing—which, as was pointed…
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Open Review leads to better books
My book manuscript, Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age, is now in Open Review. That means that while the book manuscript goes through traditional peer review, I also posted it online for a parallel Open Review. During the Open Review everyone—not just traditional peer reviewers—can read the manuscript and help make it…