Old Tobidashi Bōya “Running (or Jumping?) Boy” Sign in my Kadoma-shi Neighborhood
One day, while out on a jalan-jalan (“walking for nothing”) with my camera I happened upon this very old sign. It was located on a storage garage at…
Tag: Artificial Intelligence
The social codes and class identity of tech workers
Robert Dorschel‘s The Social Codes of Tech Workers is a sociological study of class identity among mid-level digital labourers. Drawing on interviews with American and German data scientists and…
The Human Cost of Precision
In 2022, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s son died at the age of twenty-six from a lifelong battle with cerebral palsy, a neurological disorder caused by birth-related brain damage.…
We cannot have a rational debate about technology.
Leftists, because on the whole we are mostly (and rightfully) not all that excited about AI as it exists today, are often accused of being luddites or of…
Developing a ‘Cultural Anthropology Pathways Explorer’ for a university Open Day
If you work at a university, you’ll know that Open Days are an important recruitment event. Universities here in Aotearoa are facing increasing financial challenges (a result of…
Leaving out the critical clinch in Žižek..
In a new squib on SubstackTM this morning (which I admit I did not read all of because, due at work and there is a techno-paywall requiring download…
Technics in the Dust
One early morning in August 2024, I boarded a coach bus in downtown San Francisco. We drove over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, past Reno, and through the Pyramid…
Human-Centric AI: Understanding Technology’s Impact on Society
As a digital anthropologist, studying all digital technology from a human-centric approach allows me to focus on how the technology impacts the humans who use it and human…
Using GenAI to think critically about grading in a Cultural Anthropology class
In 2019, my friend and colleague Grant Otsuki started experimenting with Generative AI (GenAI) – GPT-2 by OpenAI – to see how well it did at writing an…
The Evolution of the Digital Divide: New Dimensions of Digital Inequality
This text explores the evolution of digital inequality, highlighting how emerging phenomena pose new challenges to digital inclusion, particularly with the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI…
Cards and Codes: Spirituality and Magic in the (Bio)technological Era
This is not a scientific or technological project, but perhaps it is a project about science and technology. My proposal is to create a magical tool, a tarot…
Designing Tech That (Finally) Respects Our Time & Humanity | Announcing The Calm Tech Institute
I’m very excited to announce the launch of the Calm Tech Institute, a new design organization creating standards for technology which respect our time, attention, and humanity. Our…
The Brilliant Future of AI
On a hot August afternoon in 2018, I attended a public lecture on AI and the future of work, broadly defined. Back then, I was a student in…
Lonely Planet Looking for Connection: Citizen Science SETI Research at NASA
NASA’s homepage is as glitzy as you would expect of the U.S. Government’s sexiest administration. Glossy pictures of nebulas, astronauts, and asteroids float across the top of the…
Adventures in chatGPT #3: Jack Kerouac Edition
When I first heard about chatGPT, the main thing I was concerned about, like many others, was that students would use it instead of writing their own work.…
On Algorithmic Divination
Scientist operating an algorithmic divination machine as imagined by Midjourney’s AI (image by Author & Midjourney). Algorithms are tools of divination.[1] Like cowry shells, scapular bones,…
AI as a Feminist Issue
By choosing to look at the funding from the American Government on this field, I aim to tell a different story about AI. A quick search for the…
Platypod, Episode Seven: An Anthropology of Data, AI, and Much More
Download the transcript of this interview. For this episode of Platypod, I talked to Dr. Tanja Ahlin about her research, work, and academic trajectory. She’s currently a postdoctoral…
Worried about the impact of AI? SAR was ahead of the curve.
[Featured image courtesy of Mike MacKenzie, https://www.vpnsrus.com/, and Wikimedia Commons] Various SAR members have suggested that SAR bring to Santa Fe an expert to talk about the possibilities…
Adventures in chatGPT #2: A conversation with Nick Seaver
After writing my last post about chatGPT, I got in touch with Nick Seaver to see what he had to say about some of these issues. Here’s our conversation:…
Adventures in chatGPT: Meet David Wilkie, anthropologist
So curiosity finally got the best of me and I started looking into this whole chatGPT thing that is poised to bring about the ruin of society. I…
If I Could Talk to the Algorithm
In the film Doctor Dolittle (1967), the title character yearns to “Talk to the Animals,” as the song goes, to understand their mysterious and often vexing ways. It…
People Are Not Fixed Media
This browser does not support HTML5 audio Listen to an audio recording of this post as read by Ritwik Banerji Sensory ethnography continually emphasizes …
Mapping Algorithmic Assumptions: Reflections from a Society for Psychological Anthropology roundtable by Alexa Hagerty
Fritz Kahn, Der Mensch als Industriepalast, 1926. Detail. Image in public domain Introduction: surveil, classify and predict by Alexa Hagerty and Livia Garofalo The works distilled by the…