Speculative Futures | Taking on Big Tech: New Paradigms for New Possibilities

The landscape of information is rapidly shifting as new demands are increasing investment in digital technologies. Yet, critical scholars continue to demonstrate how many technologies are shaped by and infused with values that are not impartial, disembodied or lacking positionality. Technologies hold racial, gender and class politics.

In this talk, Dr. Safiya Noble from the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry will discuss new insights stemming from her recent book Algorithms of Oppression and posit emerging work that explores the impact of commercial technologies on the public.

The event will begin with an introduction by Dr. Kavita Philip, President’s Excellence Chair in Network Cultures at the University of British Columbia.

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Presented in conjunction with the exhibition The Imitation Game: Visual Culture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, the Speculative Futures Symposium examines artificial intelligence and the specific uses of technology in its multifarious dimensions. Across four different panel conversations, leading thinkers of today will explore the ethical implications of technology and discuss how they are working to address these issues in cultural production. Find out more »

The Speculative Futures Symposium is presented in partnership with the University of British Columbia’s Public Humanities Hub, the UBC Library and the UBC School of Information, the English Language & Literatures Department, the President’s Excellence Chair in Network Cultures and the School of Creative Writing, with additional media support from Canadian Literature.

This talk will be presented on Zoom and streamed live to the Gallery’s Facebook account here »

Questions? Submit them during the Zoom presentation using the Q&A function. You can also engage with your fellow attendees and panelists during the event using the Chat function.

New to Zoom? Learn how to register and attend a webinar here »

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Dr. Safiya U. Noble is an internet studies scholar and Professor of Gender Studies and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she serves as the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2). She holds affiliations in the School of Education & Information Studies and is a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, where she is a Commissioner on the Oxford Commission on AI & Good Governance (OxCAIGG). In 2021, she was recognized as a MacArthur Foundation Fellow (also known as the “Genius Award”) for her ground-breaking work on algorithmic discrimination, which prompted her founding of a non-profit, Equity Engine, to accelerate investment in companies, education and networks driven by women of colour. She is the author of a best-selling book on racist and sexist algorithmic bias in commercial search engines, entitled Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press), which has been widely-reviewed in scholarly and popular publications.

Dr. Kavita Philip is President’s Excellence Chair in Network Cultures and Professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia. Her research and teaching in Global South histories and sociologies of science, computational technologies, environment, network cultures, media and politics crosses geographic boundaries and ranges across scholarly disciplines. For twenty-five years, Dr. Philip has been engaged not only in the intellectual task of forging methods to connect techno-scientific, social scientific and humanistic inquiry, but also in the institutional task of building these collaborative spaces.