The global pandemic that effectively shut down our society has obviously been incredibly stressful, but for introverts, being stuck at home has some silver linings. Pearl Subban explores how all this isolation has affected introverts in the article “For introverts, the COVID-19 lockdown has an upside.” Subban explains that working and learning from home means […]
Author: M.E. O'Neill
Categories
The Mechanics of Care
This week’s readings show how much harm institutions can cause when they ignore the voices of teachers and students. First, there’s Jason Kelley’s “Students Are Pushing Back Against Proctoring Surveillance Apps,” which describes how students in various universities are fighting against restrictive and inequitable test-proctoring software such as Proctorio. Before I get into too much […]
I had some fun with AI this week, but I also had some feelings of existential dread as I thought about the dark, wide-reaching implications of this technology. But let’s start with the fun stuff: First, I took the “Which Face Is Real?” quiz a few times. I was able to tell the difference between […]
I’d like to start this week’s blog by sharing the gif I made of a scene from the Screening Surveillance film “Frames.” This short film shows a dystopian society in which surveillance cameras and facial recognition technology track your every move. It presents an uncomfortably plausible future (in fact, the social credit system the video […]
This week, I’ll be attempting to lead us through Shoshana Zuboff’s article “Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization” and her video interview with Channel 4 News “on ‘surveillance capitalism’ and how tech companies are always watching us.” For both my blog and my pathfinding activities, I’ll be focusing mostly on […]
In my past couple of blog posts, I’ve mentioned how data collection and a lack of privacy are looming concerns that I try not to think too hard about while I’m using the internet for work, school, and entertainment. I haven’t really been able to articulate exactly why the thought of companies collecting my data […]
I have to be honest; I wasn’t a fan of Chapter Four: “Automated Diaries” in Jill Walker Rettberg’s Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves. There are a lot of scary, uncomfortable realities that come with writing “digital diaries”—like privacy concerns and data collection—but in […]
Maybe I’m in the minority, but Zoom meetings don’t leave me feeling drained in the way that this week’s readings—“Why We’re Exhausted by Zoom” by Susan D. Blum and “The Zoom Gaze” by Autumm Caines—describe. Of course, I understand why “Zoom fatigue” is a real phenomenon; both Blum and Caines point out how during video […]
I want to start this post by sharing my Daily Create kaleidoscope. This activity was engrossing, and I spent way too much time playing around with the program and trying out different colors. The little red dot in the middle of my finished product gives me 2001: A Space Odyssey vibes, and an AI gone […]
“Intentionally Equitable Hospitality in Hybrid Video Dialogue: The context of virtually connecting” by Maha Bali, et al. describes how the VConnecting (Virtually Connecting) community facilitates “hybrid conversations” by livestreaming academic conferences for virtual participants who are unable to attend in person. By practicing “intentionally equitable hospitality,” the VConnecting community encourages historically marginalized and disenfranchised groups […]