This morning I have been reading a chapter by Ian Hacking on The Creation of Phenomena in scientific practice.
Hacking's essential argument is that often the conditions in the lab are so artificial, or "pure" that the phenomena found in their experiment is created rather than discovered. "Its modern equivalent has become technology, reliable and routinely produced. The effect, at least in a pure state, can only be embodied by such devices"
Insightful essay from Bruce #Schneier and Barath Raghavan - using James C. Scott's "Seeing like a State" and showing how abstraction of socio-technical systems now lets us "See like a Data Structure".
"A university fired a faculty member almost immediately not for out-of-classroom speech but for an optional course assignment. The assignment asked students to, among other things, explain “the impact of genocide/ethnic cleansing on the health/biology of the people it impacts.”"
Here's my new poster, which explains in simplified terms all the processes involved, from quartz extraction to the production of a monocrystalline wafer. This time I've also included the inputs and outputs of each type of process to give an idea of the flows and associated environmental impacts.
The recording of the 2024 Sue and Harry Bovay Lecture in the History & Ethics of Engineering is now live!
Jon Leydens (Colorado School of Mines) spoke about social context & public welfare in engineering curricula and how we can better include these topics in engineering education.
We are running a workshop (W147) at EASST to map the intersections of STS and citizen science. The participants will map their experiences, methods, and practices using Miro and pen-paper. The Situational Analysis approach highlights elements that might be overlooked to enable future collaborations.
We think our workshop will be 17/07/2024 15:30 come and join us if you will be in Amsterdam.
Now that it's been accepted to ACM FAccT'24, I've updated the preprint of my paper on why artists are right that AI art is a kind of theft. I hope this promotes more serious thought about the visions of generative AI developers and the impacts of these technologies.