I saw a great lecture today on how technology encodes racism.
Every winter the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab offers a series of lectures by scientists - most of them local, from the Plasma Physics Lab itself, Princeton University or Rutgers University, occasionally folks from other major universities - on various topics.
I originally went to expose my kids to science; they are men now, and still come when they can. I often see one of my good friends there; I used to take his son and he started coming on my own. If no one can join me, neither a son or my wife or my friend, I go alone. These lectures mean a lot to me.
Most of these talks end up as videos on the internet. Here is the archive, where you can watch many of them on line: Science On Saturday Archive.
The lecture I saw today was, Science on Saturday: "Will Robots Save Us… or Slay Us? Reimagining the Default Settings of Technology & Society."
You may think, looking at the title, as I did, that the topic would be sort of a reality based examination of the science fiction scenarios in which robots go wild and take over, displacing, and perhaps attacking and even eliminating humanity.
It turned out to be something quite different; something quite unexpected. It wasn't about the future, but about now.
Today's lecture was by Professor Ruha Benjamin, who is not a physicist, or chemist, or biologist but who is in Princeton's Department of African American Studies.
Dr. Benjamin is a very engaging speaker, very passionate, and is clearly a very profound thinker, and quite funny in a very trenchant and discerning way.
The topic was about how existing software, the software we use every day in our daily lives, how existing technological devices, everything from cell phone cameras to automatic soap dispensers in bathrooms, is coded to select for, well, white men.
The short video movie in the talk will make you laugh out loud - our audience did - while also breaking your heart; it broke mine when I realized what was happening. It should break your heart.
I wanted to be sure to note this lecture before becoming distracted by other things. It should be up on the SOS archive linked above by next week; last week's fascinating lecture already is.
I recommend this lecture highly. You cannot understand our world quite so well before watching it as you can after watching it.
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