Session: Opening Keynote: Ruha Benjamin

https://conference.publicspaces.net/en/session/keynote-1

Naam/name Notulist: Maika Eggink / Laura Krabbe
Datum/date: 27-06-2023 10:10

 

Sprekersnamen/speaker names:

• Ruha Benjamin - https://conference.publicspaces.net/en/people/ruha-benjamin
• moterators: Clarice Gargard and Roland Duong

Shownotes 

(mentioned links, books, podcasts, literature, etc.)
 

• Sleep Dealer (film)
• -
• -

Live notes (500-750 words)

Notes Maika: 
Introduction
Nowadys there is more attention for a more inclusive and safer internet.
A public space that is not only driven by commercial intentions, that is the challenge of our time.

Wouter Tebbens: director Public Spaces
Collective internet, based on public values. Let's reclaim the internet!
Important funding came in last week, that's good news! 
People live in harmony with nature and social values.

Ruha Benjamin: Race to the future? (Princeton University)
'Race' meaning: racism + speed
Not all speed is movement, innovation often leads to more containment. 
We have to insist on a new social contract. 
Visioning just futures; what do we have to seed and grow for these futures?
Techno dystopia: tech is going to destroy us versus tech utopia: everyting is getting more efficient/better.
Tech is in the driver seat, look at the humans behind these systems.

Deadly data, bureaucracy is happening just under our noses.
Do-gooding data, community innovation project, predictive algoritm (point out future criminals).
Institutions don't work in the best interest of our youth. Youth asked to be in charge: give us the resources.

New vison: look beneath the service.
Racism distorts how we see our environment, we see reality through distorded lenses, racism is everywhere. 
George Cuvier, french naturalist, describes the white and the black race just on body aspects, destinctions are 'biological', we have to denaturaly this distinctions yesterday!
In data sciences we see the heritage of this vision. 
EU uses a lot of tech to patrol the borders/sea.
Smart borders/smart cities: repress descend, facial recognitions, police using social media data.
Digital rigths for all, except for migrants (and those who look like migrants)

Provocations:
-Racism is productive; it constructs
-Race & technology are coproduced
-Imagination is a field of action

Example: Public spaces (photo of bench), the bench is devided, people can't sleep on the bench. There were also single benches, benches in cages, a bench with spikes -> This has to do with the housing problems. 
--> Innovation and inequaty go hand in hand. Discriminatory design.

Humans are bad. What about technology? What does tech see as high risk?

Discrimination in health care algoritms, black students are labeled as high risk.

The new jim code
coded bias + imagined objectivity

 

• EU AI Intelligence Act
• Amnesty tech 

Quation: Are there human rights violations hidden in your inventements?

We need to reimagine the system entirely.

Clip from Sleep Dealer: inclusion and diversity can go hand in hand with domination.
'work without humans'

Robots have been a way to talk about dehuminasation. No room for basic human needs. 
 
Build a global movement about tech justice, e.g: 
Data for black lives
PS

Toronto: smart city of surveillaance
Barcelona: collective intelligence

Not Utopia, but Ustopia

We are pattern makers, we don't have to accept old patterns, we can create new ones!!

Notes Laura:
Welcome
Clarice: How do we create internet for everyone?
Its hard work

Roland: program maker
Clarice: journalist/filmmaker

Ruha
Visioning just futures. How to create just futures?