As we watch what’s happening at Twitter – billionaire owner burning place to ground, employees leaving in revolt, users mourning their lost world and setting up accounts elsewhere, #RIPTwitter and related hashtags dominating their trending topics – it’s helpful, perhaps, to ask the question “what IS the Twitter that is dying?” In his already infamous …
Category: Commentary
Race, Policing, and Computing: Project Green Light
Discussed in this post: Race, Policing, and Detroit's Project Green Lighthttp://esc.umich.edu/project-green-light/ Yesterday the Wayne County Prosecutor publicly apologized to the first American known to be wrongfully arrested via facial recognition algorithm: a black man arrested earlier this year by the Detroit Police. The statement cited the unreliability of software, especially as applied to people of …
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Heading to the Courthouse for Sandvig v. Sessions
(or: Research Online Should Not Be Illegal) I’m a college professor. But on Friday morning I won't be in the classroom, I'll be in courtroom 30 in the US District Courthouse on Constitution Avenue in Washington DC. The occasion? Oral arguments on the first motion in Sandvig v. Sessions. You may recall that the ACLU, …
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Spike in Online Gig Work: Flash in the Pan or Future of Employment?
By Siddharth Suri and Mary L. Gray Most conventional jobs involve hierarchy. A boss divvies up work to the office’s full-time employees awaiting direction and a green light. While still true for the majority of American workers, a growing number of people are picking up work online — accepting jobs with companies that assign, schedule, route, and …
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Architecture or Minecraft?
(or, "Hopefully 4chan Won't Hear About This Contest") The social-media-ification of everything continues. If you've got time for some late-summer procrastination, thanks to the Internet you can choose the design of my house. As you may have read here two weeks ago, I'm crowdsourcing it. The first competition is over and I received 16 entries -- …
I crowdsourced the design of my house
(or, "The Social-Media-ification of Everything") The architecture crowdsourcing Web site Arcbazar has been called "The Worst Thing to Happen To Architecture Since the Internet Started." The site also got some press recently by running a parallel, unauthorized architecture competition for the "people's choice" for the design of the Obama Presidential Library. I've decided to use arcbazar.com …
Why I Am Suing the Government — Update
[This is an old post. SEE ALSO: The most recent blog post about this case.] Last month I joined other social media researchers and the ACLU to file a lawsuit against the US Government to protect the legal right to conduct online research. This is newly relevant today because a community of devs interested in public policy started …
Why I Am Suing the Government
(or: I write scripts, bots, and scrapers that collect online data) [This is an old post. SEE ALSO: The most recent blog post about this case.] I never thought that I would sue the government. The papers went in on Wednesday, but the whole situation still seems unreal. I’m a professor at the University of Michigan and a social …
Hacker activism
(This post is a slightly-tweaked version of a talk I gave as a respondant to Gabriella Coleman’s recent talk at the University of Pennsylvania. I'm grateful to DCC for inviting me, and to Biella Coleman for provoking these ideas.) There is something both over and under-determined about the word “hacker.” On the one hand, “hacker” …
17 Games that Showcase Gaming
(or, interactive art & entertainment: a short tour) OK, dear readers, it's time for some BuzzFeed-style content here on the Social Media Collective. You want to understand digital media, right? You occasionally like to play a game, right? I'm pleased to revisit and refresh my list of games that quickly demonstrate what is possible in digital gaming. Sort …
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