Laura’s Lens

Written by Safiya U. Noble on Noema.

“Investments in anti-democratic technologies come at an incredible cost to the public at a time when deeper investments should be made in public health, education, public media and abolitionist approaches in the tech sector.”

Read ‘The Loss Of Public Goods To Big Tech’ on the Noema site.

Written by April Glaser on NBC News.

“Tech Inquiry’s research comes as technology companies have ramped up efforts to win large military and law enforcement contracts, despite employee activism against the work.”

…

“It’s important to recognize that the marketing that happens inside of these companies, assuring workers that what they’re doing is good and that their surveillance program is used for disaster relief and not drone targeting, for instance, is much like the marketing targeted at the public,” [Meredith Whittaker] said.

Read ‘Thousands of contracts highlight quiet ties between Big Tech and U.S. military’ on the NBC News site.

Written by Safiya Umoja Noble and Sarah T. Roberts on UCLA Published Works.

“What we learn from consistently studying the discourses of Silicon Valley is that its successes come at the expense of a growing number of communities. The costs to these communities are masked by investments in an imagined post-racial, post-gender, post-class reality that is seemingly sympathetic to inclusion, but resists it in material, quantifiable and cultural terms.”

Read ‘Technological Elites, the Meritocracy, and Post-Racial Myths in Silicon Valley’ on the UCLA Published Works site.

Written by Alice Wong on Esquire.

“In this critical time, when scarcity is a reality, you see the hierarchy. Certain groups are valued over others. This is the world that so many disabled and chronically ill people already live in. Our lives are still seen as expendable. Now the magnitude is much greater.”

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“My hope for coming out of this pandemic is that we don’t return to the status quo. Many don’t realize that “normal” was actually not great for a lot of people. Just because all of the nondisabled people go back to work—or to Burning Man, or to Coachella—that doesn’t mean we should stop thinking about accessibility.”

Read ‘‘Normal’ Was Actually Not Great for a Lot of People’ on the Esquire site.

Written by Kashmir Hill on The New York Times.

“We’ve been active in trying to sound the alarm bells around facial recognition, both as a threat to privacy when it works and a racist threat to everyone when it doesn’t,” said Phil Mayor, an attorney at [American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan]. “We know these stories are out there, but they’re hard to hear about because people don’t usually realize they’ve been the victim of a bad facial recognition search.”

Read ‘Wrongfully Accused by an Algorithm’ on the The New York Times site.

Written by Olu Niyiawosusi on A List Apart.

“Not having access to the internet is expensive, locking you out of essential services and a surfeit of helpful information. Giving people full access to the splendors and knowledge of the online world should be imperative for everyone who works on it.”

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“People with disabilities are more likely to be a captive audience to apps and websites using their data inappropriately or engaging in other unethical practices. This may be because they rely on a particular site to interact with other people with disabilities, because they lack the tools to visit other sites, or lack other suitable websites or apps to use.”

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“All the tenets of intersectional feminism, web accessibility, and diversity and inclusion are inextricably tied up in making the web a better place, for all and by all.”

Read ‘Building the Woke Web: Web Accessibility, Inclusion & Social Justice’ on the A List Apart site.

Written by Sherronda J. Brown on gal-dem.

“Eco-fascist rhetoric works to obscure the responsibility of white colonialism and its long history of destruction, as well as imperialist presences in predominantly black and brown countries”

Read ‘Humans are not the virus: don’t be an eco-fascist’ on the gal-dem site.

Written by Albert Fox Cahn and Alyssa Domino on Fast Company.

“Rather than simply accepting tracking with open arms, Americans should be wary of geeks bearing gifts. Today’s startups could do more than squander venture capital dollars—their misguided COVID-19 surveillance measures may cost lives and undermine our democracy.

… This points to one of the most fundamental concerns in any new health surveillance tool: Who else gets the data? Even if a tool is shown to be effective, even if it’s deployable at scale, how else might the data be used by government agencies?”

Read ‘Tracking everyone’s whereabouts won’t stop COVID-19’ on the Fast Company site.

Written by Yael Grauer on OneZero.

“It’s no secret that connecting with co-workers and management through tools like Slack, Zoom, and Google Hangouts is just not the same as going into the office. But technical glitches aren’t the only area of concern as meetings are relegated to bits and bytes. User privacy is, as well.”

Read ‘Slack, Zoom, Google Hangouts: Are Your Remote Work Apps Spying on You?’ on the OneZero site.

Written by Laurie Penny on Wired.

“The diseases that are most successful in the coming century will, as always, be the diseases that exploit our major failure modes and popular delusions.

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If you design a world economy that rewards self-interest and makes altruism unaffordable, it’s unsurprising that some people start acting like they’re in the prisoner’s dilemma.”

Read ‘Panic, Pandemic, and the Body Politic’ on the Wired site.