The following video is a fascinating collection of prognoses by journalist Rex Malik on the impact of new computer technology on society.
The Tropes vs Women in Video Games project is a fantastic series of video about “sexist patterns associated with female representations in games, and to illuminate how these patterns reinforce and perpetuate harmful attitudes about women in our culture”. I watched part one (embedded below) on “Women as Background Decoration” in games. And part two, which centers more representation of male violence against women in video games.
Via The New Inquiry, “TNI Syllabus: Gaming and Feminism”.
Allowed to grow old is a project by photographer Isa Leshko. In this project she made photographic portraits of farm animals. These animals usually never have the chance to grow old and I found them very moving.
In the following interview from 1981, Michel Foucault gives a brilliant and eloquent overview of his philosophical project.
Bruno Latour has written an article (first published in La Monde) which asks if the coronavirus could serve as a dress rehearsal for the crisis of climate change
It is as though the intervention of the virus could serve as a dress rehearsal for the next crisis, the one in which the reorientation of living conditions is going to be posed as a challenge to all of us, as will all the details of daily existence that we will have to learn to sort out carefully. I am advancing the hypothesis, as have many others, that the health crisis prepares, induces, incites us to prepare for climate change. This hypothesis still needs to be tested.
Read the full article, “Is This a Dress Rehearsal?”
This is an interesting piece of news the The New York Times: “Burning Cell Towers, Out of Baseless Fear They Spread the Virus”. On the one hand, there indeed seemd to be a problem with disinformation about 5G as origin of the novel corona virus.
But then again, it seems remarkable again that the events described in the article are being pushed aside as groundless fear of luddites. While it seems to me that this is yet another example of technology that is pushed through without much input and that not many people are waiting for.
Instead of scoffing away these people it could taken seriously as real (physical) issue with disputes. And seems to me a good example where publics in the sense John Dewey can arise, as this technology has different meanings for different people.
The current technocratic hype are “track and trace” apps to help contain the coronavirus. The example of South Korea is frequently given as success story. This success is debatable however and needs to be put in context. An article on nature.com gives more context on the surveillance of infected people in South Korea:
South Korea’s data transparency during this outbreak has its origins in how the government handled the 2015 outbreak of MERS, which reportedly infected 186 people in South Korea and killed 36. The government at the time initially refused to identify the hospitals in which infected people were being treated, but a software programmer made a map of cases based on crowdsourced reports and anonymous tips from hospital staff. Eventually, the government relented and named the affected hospitals.
Read the full article on nature.com for more background information.
In de volgende video deelt filosofe Eva Meijer haar ideeën over de coronavirus pandemie.
The Nation published a great interview with Sheila Jasanoff by Nawal Arjini. Interetsing topics include the spread of information about the virus, the use of visualization for conveying statistical information, and the role/importance of social sciences in these times.
One aspect of this coronavirus pandemic is the spread of information. I therefore find this reflection by Erin McAweeney on “Who Benefits from Health Misinformation?” quite important:
Different groups with different motives are exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic in different ways. I’m a senior analyst at Graphika, a social media network analysis firm, where we map “cyber-social terrain” and the information that flows through them. To date, we’ve found online communities from health topics, political groups, and social identity groups pushing misinformation on COVID-19: grifter televangelists, QAnon, MAGA Twitter, anti-vaxxers, conservative and anti-CCP politicians and billionaires, and anti-immigration parties in France and Italy. These groups frame and misrepresent the issue to fit their ideological goals.