What We’re Reading in July
Here are some of the readings that have caught our attention this month.
Technologies of humility: Citizen Participation in Governing Science, by Sheila Jassanof
Recommended by: Anna, Foresight Lead
Technologies of humility by Sheila Jaanoff, struck a chord this week as I was reading it. Although the piece is nearly 20 years old, it is still very relevant today, which could be a reflection of how slowly change is adopted in policy making institutions.
Jasanoff beautifully lays out a framework for thinking about how we can systematically assess unknown and uncertain technologies, this is what she calls technologies of humility. She discusses the appropriate starting points for making these thoughtful assessments as; framing, vulnerability, distribution and learning. I was impressed with the flexibility and relvantness of her thoughts, and feel that enacting technologies of humility could make an impact, even now, nearly 20 years later.
“Is it sufficient…to assess technology’s consequences, or must we also seek to evaluate its aims? How should we act when the values of scientific inquiry appear to conflict with other fundamental social values? Has our ability to innovate in some areas run unacceptably ahead of our powers of control? Will some of our most revolutionary technologies increase inequality, promote violence, threaten cultures, or harm the environment? And are our institutions, whether national or supranational, up to the task of governing our dizzying technological capabilities?”
2. Race After Technology, by Ruha Benjamin
Recommended by: Dominique, Design Researcher
I'm currently reading Ruha Benjamin's book, Race After Technology. I'm still early on in the book, but I am really appreciating how she reconceptualises glitches. Using The Matrix as a reference, she argues that instead of seeing glitches as mere anomalies or interruptions in an otherwise reasonable system, to instead approach glitches as indications of larger issues within the structure. In short, to recognise glitches as evidence that there is a problem with the system. All of our work is rooted in an analysis of ethics and power and reading this has me wondering how we can use glitches as sources of information that inform how we imagine and shape the future of technology.
"Perhaps in that case glitches are not spurious, but rather a kind of signal of how the system operates. Not an aberration but a form of evidence, illuminating underlying flaws in a corrupted system"
3. The Missing Cryptoqueen, by Jamie Bartlett
Recommended by: Anna Dent, Head of Research
This is a bit of a cheat as I haven’t read the book, but I have listened to the podcast it’s based on, which Jamie Bartlett and Georgia Catt put together in 2019. They were on the hunt for Dr Ruja Ignatova who set up cryptocurrency OneCoin, which promised investors enormous profits. The trouble is, it seems to all have been a huge Ponzi scheme, with huge losses for those who, in some cases, invested their life savings. The podcast kept me gripped on several long train journeys; it’s a fascinating and engaging story. But it’s also a grim lesson in the risks that crypto and other web3 products like NFTs represent, and how easily we can be swept up in and dazzled by their promises while at the same time being kept in the dark about how they really operate. Dr Ignatova has recently been added to the FBI’s Most Wanted list, so the story is far from over.
4. Just Us, by Claudia Rankine
Recommended by: Aurelie, Research Project coordinator
Essays, poems and images are gathered in this fascinating composition. Feeling one’s way into experiencing othereness is how reading the entire volume has felt for me. A book about understanding that all is intentional, whether we mean how we act or may not realise what we convey, and that we each are key to making any room, space, whether private or public, a little more alert of the dynamics that are really at play, all of the time. Opened doors to imagining oneself on the other side of the imaginary fence, well seated in the present tense. A ballad, never peremptory, never ostentatious. Rankine - also author of Citizen, An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely - is a poet, one of my favourite living writers.
5. Women’s Work, by Ferren Gipson and Girl Online: A User Manual, by Joanna Walsh
Recommended by: Rachel Coldicutt, Research Director
As art historian Ferren Gipson says in the introduction to Womens Work, “Women can and should do whatever the hell kinds of work they want”, and these two very different and wonderful books are meditations on different aspects of that very concept.
Gipson describes Women’s Work as a quilt, bringing together the “artworks and stories of thirty-three individuals and one collective who have worked across ceramics, textiles and soft sculpture”. Starting with the improvisational quilting of The Women of Gee’s Bend and finishing with contemporary embroiderer Hannah Hill, the book explores how women’s art subverts both patriarchal norms and the concept of automation, and shows how innovation can be woven into the most conventional of forms.
Joanna Walsh’s Girl Online describes itself as “a work of feminist autotheory” but it’s also a work of art. Girl Online tumbles together the theory and practice of a life lived online, describing the financial necessities of managing star ratings with the everyday mixed realities of physical and intellectual labour. Experimenting with #theoryplushousework!, where she paints an Airbnb while listening to Donna Haraway and debobbles a blanket in the auditory company of Keaton Sutherland, Walsh gives depth and form to the “Alician experience” of stepping through the screen, and describes the gossamer experience of “filling cyberspace”. Watch Walsh discuss the ins and outs of being and writing a Girl Online with Mackenzie Wark>