Tame and Disarm Dangerous Algorithms

For this episode, we consider hardtruth #53; “tame and disarm dangerous algorithms.” It was written by Geert Lovink, a media theorist from the Institute of Network Cultures in the Netherlands. He reads his writing for my online primer on digital media literacy where he refers to the work of mathematician Cathy O'Neill and a series of questions about the viability of media literacy and fake news being raised at that time. Then, we hear from Professor Jacqueline Wernimont, Distinguished Chair of Digital Humanities and Social Engagement & Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Dartmouth College. At a Fake News Poetry Workshop in 2018 she fed a bot some words of decency. Programmed to help us better understand the algorthmic stupidity of AI by project collaborator, Dr. Kyle Booten, the words of Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh; Joy Harjo, the first Native American national poet laureate; and the feminist digital pedagogy collective, FemTechNet allowed for poetry from which we have all learned:Voice is perfectRESOLVE is now conflict, (and)Disappearance is peace.Jacque speaks about how this poem helps her to understand the archive more ethically in these very dark times; Geert ends the episode on an upbeat (dark) note, by setting the poem to music!.........................Join us as we work together to learn about, and thereby alter, the connections between fake news, artificial intelligence, and the stupid but powerful algorithms that underwrite the digital ecosphere.Read or respond to a poem or hardtruth found at the online primer of digital media literacy, #100hardtruths-#fakenews or fakenews-poetry.org.Organize your own Fake News Poetry Workshop.Reach out with questions or content @ 100hardtruths@gmail.com.Twitter: @100HardTruthsInstagram: @100HardTruthsYouTube: 100 Hard Truths Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Om Podcasten

We engage in radical digital media literacy by enjoying a bite of education and a bit of poetry, creating humane responses to fake news and social media in the era of Covid-19.Each short episode assembles materials made over three related efforts. First, complex and consequential ideas about fake news: “hardtruths.” These were gathered in 2017 for an online primer in digital media literacy, #100hardtruths-#fakenews. There you can find scores of resources about fake news by artists, journalists, activists, scholars, and more. http://scalar.me/100hardtruths.Next we offer poems that build off of, respond to, or deepen a hardtruth. These were written in 2018 and 2019, at Fake News Poetry Workshops: encounters that address these complex concerns through art, intimacy, technology, and poetry. http://fakenews-poetry.org.Finally, given both the digital and viral truths wrought by the crisis of COVID-19, and to provide some small relief, we provide resources and methods to deepen connection and possibility during a time of social distancing and via technology.Each episode offers things to do with others as well as things that were done before and for you. Tender hand-offs of digital things remind us how we can use technologies that distance us physically for better. Making and making use of poetry and related knowledge can create verification engines that rely on belief structures outside the endangering logics of the internet and the fake news propelled therein.We are people, distanced but maintaining, and we need more than the transmission of messages and data. We want connection, goodness, reason, feeling, and change. In a time when we are more reliant on digital technology than ever, each episode demonstrates methods to take part in digital defiance, without collusion, and with care for our internet things and digital ways.Join us! Read or respond to a poem or hardtruth found on the two websites above.Organize your own Fake News Poetry Workshop.Reach out with questions or content @ 100hardtruths@gmail.com.Twitter: @100HardTruthsInstagram: #100HardTruthsYouTube: 100 Hard Truths   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.