“What can those of us who work in, and maybe even love, computing cultures do about computing’s colonial expansions?” Sareeta Amrute’s keynote address “Tech Colonialism Today” opened EPIC2019 in a provocative,...
Tag: agency
Agency and AI in Consulting: Pathways to Prioritize Agency-Enhancing Automations
Amidst the advances of AI and automation, this paper provides a framework for ethnographic methods and insights to enhance human agency at work. Through analyzing data collected from ethnographic immersions in three different consulting firms (a professional services firm, a management...
EPIC2019 Gallery
Gallery installations at EPIC2019 evoked multi-modal experiences of ethnographic practice—written, oral, visual, three-dimensional, interactive, critical, reflective. These creative projects offered conference attendees diverse experiences of agency and ethnography. The conference committee made...
Agency and Innovation
EPIC2019 Panel, Providence, Rhode Island Robotics, machine learning, and other technologies are provoking new hopes and fears about human agency. Tropes of the charismatic lone innovator, whether hero or villain, are also starting to lose popular currency. When we acknowledge that the agents of...
Owning Our Devices: Learning from People Who Adapt Tech for Well-Being
Margaret Morris interviewed by Anna Zavyalova Public debate has rightly focused on the perils and toxicity of new technologies, and questioned the motivations of the companies building them. Meanwhile though, people are creatively adapting technology to their own social and psychological needs....
If Today’s Problems Are So Urgent, Why Are We So Stuck?
https://player.vimeo.com/video/1021165595?badge=0&autopause=0&player_id=0&app_id=58479 We are surrounded by messages urging us to see the suffering, injustice, and corruption of both the natural and built world. But today, people seem to be gripped by passive despair. Why is that?...
Robots and the Fallacy of Agency
PechaKucha Presentation What if I told you, that humans are not very special? That the very qualities that make us human are not pre-given features but are rather properties generated by our participation in the world at large. In this view, humans are not mere expressions of blueprints. Rather,...
Creating Agency: What Ethnography Can Learn from Storytelling
PechaKucha Presentation This PK explores the relationship between ethnography and post-modern storytelling techniques that shift the locus of agency towards the audience and away from the protagonist. The presentation builds on insights from a project about the future of storytelling, and explores...