Episode 2

Technology, Optimism, and Race ft. ruha Benjamin

October 29, 2019

TRANSCRIPT

Shobita and Jack talk about the price of technological optimism, and speak with Ruha Benjamin, Associate Professor of African American Studies and founder of the JUST DATA lab at Princeton University. She is the author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, published by Polity Books earlier this year.

• Ruha Benjamin (2019). Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Polity Books.

• Ruha Benjamin, editor (2019). Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life. Duke University Press.

• Ruha Benjamin (2019). "White Supremacy and Artificial Intelligence." Yes! Magazine. August 28.

• Ruha Benjamin (2018). "Black Afterlives Matter." Boston Review. July 16.

• Ruha Benjamin (2016). "Catching Our Breath: Critical Race STS and the Carceral Imagination." eSTS: Engaging Science, Technology, and Society. Vol. 2: 145-156.

Study Questions:

1. Why does Benjamin describe the automation of racial discrimination as “almost more dangerous” than traditional methods?

2. How is the current phenomenon of discrimination via algorithm connected to historical discrimination practices and why is it important to connect the two ideas?

3. What does it mean to find a social fix to a technical problem and how might it change technology?

4. What kind of process should be used to create equitable technology?

5. How is technology imagined in relation to society?

Related Links:

• Begley, Sharon (2019). "NIH and Gates Foundation launch effort to bring genetic cures for HIV, sickle cell disease to world's poor." STATNews. October 23.

• Fussell, Sidney (2019). "How an Attempt at Correcting Bias in Tech Goes Wrong." The Atlantic. October 9.

• John Morgan (2019). "Dominic Cummings' science obsession: based on fact or fiction?" Times Higher Education. October 16.