The sky is rumbling behind the curtains, the occasional flash peeping in around the cracks to tell me the storm is close. I’m here, behind my computer, a bit restless in the quiet aftermath of bath time and stories and cuddles and the inevitable struggles too much of a day sometimes brings. My one vivid…
The night before Social Responsibility of Algorithms 2022 begins
And just like that, it’s June. Tomorrow, Social Responsibility of Algorithms 2022 begins. This is a project I’ve been working on (with many amazing colleagues) since before this pandemic was a thing. It’s almost unreal to see it get to this point — thanks to covid, the project has been delayed, shifted to online, transformed…
Taking a pause
It’s been a bit quiet around here lately. It’s not that I have run out of things to say — more than that the nights are filled with too much stuff, and if I push too much to get it all finished, I find myself slipping into a kind of edge state that isn’t healthy…
Boundaries are in your head
“Everything, as they say, is connected to everything else, and not neatly. There is no clearly determinable boundary between the sea and land, between sociology and anthropology, between an automobile’s exhaust and your nose. There are only boundaries of word, thought, perception, and social agreement — artificial, mental model boundaries.” -Donella H. Meadows, in Thinking…
Truth, trust and autonomous systems
We have a new episode of the Algorithmic Futures Podcast out, and it has me thinking back to my earlier post on objectivity, and the challenges of figuring out what we know — and how we know it. In the podcast episode, our guest, Lyndon Llewellyn from AIMS, presents the kind of scenario that keeps…
The Algorithmic Futures Podcast is now live!
I am so excited to make this announcement. Zena and I have been working on the podcast for months now, turning an idea into something we could send out into the world. I’m proud of the work we’ve done together here, and of what we’ve learned so far. The podcast broadly focuses on how we…
The stories we tell
I have one picture from my childhood. It’s summer and I am maybe eight. My brother and I are in swimsuits under the fig tree in our backyard, hugging and beaming at the camera. We look happy. I was supposed to give the picture back to my mother, but that was 15 years, ten homes…
Here we are again
For the second time in two months, we are in quarantine. Thus far, we are well, and that’s something to be happy about, but it’s feeling a bit much at the moment. School hasn’t even started yet, and I’ll be taking yet another bout of leave (which isn’t leave — no one does my job…
Birth in the time of covid
Some of this post could be triggering to those who have experienced birth trauma. Please be mindful of this if you choose to read it. I need to stop following covid case numbers. They aren’t changing anything for me beyond a creeping anxiety that every slight cough my children make is a sign that something…