This page has some links to relevant resources.
Books
- Aramis, or the love of technology – Bruno Latour
- Bodies in Code – Mark Hansen
- Capital and language – Christian Marazzi
- Changing Digital Geography – Jessica McLean Use your university log-in to access this.
- Code/space – Kitchin & Dodge
- Geography & Technology – Brunn et al. (Eds.)
- Interactive Art & Embodiment – Nathaniel Stern
- It’s complicated… the social lives of networked teens – danah boyd
- The Language of New Media – Lev Manovich
- Personal connections in the networked age – Nancy Baym
- Skype: bodies, screens, space – Longhurst Use your university log-in for the VLE Books link at the top of the page.
- Unlike Us Reader – Social Media Monopolies and their Alternatives
Media
News articles
- The Ringification of Suburban Life – WIRED
- (2019) By Louise Matsakis. Consumer surveillance cameras are everywhere now, and they’re capturing moments we otherwise would never have known happened.
- Everyday people: How a massive picture database sparked a discussion about AI and bias
- (2019) By Alex Johnson. “A few months ago, an art project appeared online that offered people the chance to see just how one of the most widely used photo research databases would categorize them.”
- Manchester City’s smart band of gold seems to have scrambled fans’ minds – The Guardian (2018)
- by Barry Glendenning. Manchester City FC “have found yet another way of making money, a wristband that tells you everything they want you to know”.
- Teens Are Debating the News on Instagram – The Atlantic (2018)
- by Taylor Lorenz. “More teenagers are getting their information from so-called flop accounts.”
- Tommy Hilfiger smart clothes track wearers – BBC News (2018)
- “A new line of smart clothing from Tommy Hilfiger will track and reward users for wearing its products.”
- Facebook deletes pages after uncovering ‘coordinated’ US misinformation campaign – Telegraph (2018)
- by Natasha Bernal. “Facebook has removed 32 pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram for being involved in a coordinated campaign to influence social media users ahead of a crucial mid-term election vote in the US.”
- How Software Ate the Point of Sale. Or, why paying for stuff is so complicated now – The Atlantic (2018)
- by Alexis Madrigal. “The act of paying for stuff is undergoing a great transformation. The networks of machines and code that let you move your imaginary money from your bank account to a merchant are changing—the gadget that takes your card, the computer that tracks a restaurant or store’s inventory, the cards themselves”
- This algorithm says I’m aggressive, irresponsible and unattractive. But should we believe it? – Sydney Morning Herald (2018)
- by Ben Grubb. “On July 26 at 3.31pm I received my results for the equivalent of a psychometric test, only they were based not on hundreds of questions to determine my traits but simply a photograph of yours truly.”
- An App for Ejecting the Homeless – The Atlantic (2018)
- by Dae Shik Kim Hawkins. “Amazon’s hometown has one of the nation’s worst homelessness problems. But instead of using its technology and its wealth to fix it, the city is making the problem worse.”
- What does it see? The troubled gaze of an artificial intelligence – Kirsten Menger-Anderson (2018)
- In this article for Towards Data Science, Kirsten Menger-Anderson explores the politics of artificial intelligence and machine vision techonlogies and the ways these are contingent on always-partial data.
- Who Gets to Live in Silicon Valley? – The Atlantic (2018)
- by Ingrid Burrington. “Google and San Jose hope to make the city more affordable for working- and middle-class families, but they make matters worse.”
- We created poverty. Algorithms won’t make that go away – Virginia Eubanks (2018)
- In this Guardian comment, Virgina Eubanks (author of Automating Inequality) discusses how the use of automated systems mostly contributes to propagation of inequality, by automating existing iniquitous policy, rather than helps remove it.
- ‘The discourse is unhinged’: how the media gets AI alarmingly wrong – The Guardian (2018)
- by Oscar Schwartz. “Social media has allowed self-proclaimed ‘AI influencers’ who do nothing more than paraphrase Elon Musk to cash in on this hype with low-quality pieces. The result is dangerous”
- The Unbearable Awkwardness of Automation – Carolina Miranda (2018)
- In this article for the Atlantic Carolina Miranda looks at how automated processing are making architecture more awkward.
- This app will tell you if you smell – even if your friends won’t – Telegraph (2017)
- The hygiene-conscious can now rely on a mobile app to tell them the truth when their colleagues are too polite, after the invention of a Bluetooth device that can detect unpleasant body odours. –– by James Titcomb
- TV anchor says live on-air ‘Alexa, order me a dollhouse’, guess what happens next – The Register (2017)
- Story on accidental order begets story on accidental order begets accidental order –– by Shaun Nichols
- Apple and Amazon are under fire for Siri and Alexa’s responses to sexual harassment – Quartz (2017)
- Leah Fessler reports on Apple, Amazon and Google’s approaches to ethically questionable behaviour in relation to their ‘virtual assistants’, Siri, Alexa and Home.
- Rise of the sex robots – The Guardian (2017)
- Jenny Kleeman presents a video discussing the development of and opposition to ‘sex robots’. The video presents a useful if brief discussion of ethics. but also contains some images that some may find disturbing.
- The Data That Turned the World Upside Down – Motherboard (2017)
- Psychologist Michal Kosinski developed a method to analyze people in minute detail based on their Facebook activity. Did a similar tool help propel Donald Trump to victory? Two reporters from Zurich-based Das Magazin went data-gathering.–– by Hannes Grassegger and Mikael Krogerus.
- It me: how memes made us feel less alone – New Statesman (2017)
- An article by Amelia Tait on how memes can play particular roles in convening a sense of belonging and community that fulfils particular kinds f social function.
- The Robots are coming and Sweden is Fine – Peter S Goodman, New York Times (2017)
- “In a world full of anxiety about the potential job-destroying rise of automation, Sweden is well placed to embrace technology while limiting human costs.”
U.S. Visitors May Have to Hand Over Social Media Passwords: DHS – NBC News (2017)URL
- Edit
- “People who want to visit the United States could be asked to hand over their social-media passwords to officials as part of enhanced security checks, the country’s top domestic security chief said.” –– by Alexander Smith
- Edit
- Microsoft’s Kate Crawford tells SXSW that society must prepare for authoritarian movements to test the ‘power without accountability’ of artificial intelligence
- The march of the micro-influencers: why your friends are promoting toothpaste – New Statesman (2017)
- An article by Amelia Tait on the growth in ‘ordinary’ people promoting commercial products through their social media feeds to their friends for payment, or freebies.
- Woman In China Says Colleague’s Face Was Able To Unlock Her iPhone X – Huffington Post (2017)
- Brave new era in technology needs new ethics – FT (2016)
- Advances in technology pose difficult moral questions for humanity — and it is not clear who is responsible for providing answers
- Women considered better coders – but only if they hide their gender – Guardian (2016)
- Researchers find software repository GitHub approved code written by women at a higher rate than code written by men, but only if the gender was not disclosed
- Lonelygirl15: how one mysterious vlogger changed the internet – Guardian (2016)
- Bree was a funny, friendly 16-year-old video blogger with a strange family. But all was not what it seemed. Ten years on, we revisit YouTube’s first viral sensation –– by Elena Cresci
- Our digital lives and the chaos beneath – Will Self (2016)
- Disturbed by a technical glitch while watching a box set, Will Self began to consider the narrowing gap between images and real life. Is technology altering our grasp on reality? The Guardian.
- How porn is damaging our children’s future sex lives – Gaurdian (2016)
- Any boy with a smartphone can watch online pornography – and it’s harming their ability to relate to real-life girls and women –– by Joanna Moorhead
- The invisible credit card of the future – BBC (2016)
- Imagine strolling into your local supermarket, popping your essentials into a basket, heading to the bagging area – where no items are unexpected – and walking out with your weekly shop. –– by Kevin Peachey
- Is Uber getting too vital to fail? – BBC (2016)
- by Dave Lee. “For the towns and cities that chose to work with Uber, this could put them in a very difficult situation. Stop paying Uber, and entire parts of town could be suddenly cut off from affordable public transport.”
- End of the supermarket queue? Amazon opens futuristic shop with no tills or cashiers – Telegraph (2016)
- Long queues at the supermarket could soon become a distant memory after Amazon unveiled a grocery store without tills or barcode scanners.–– by James Titcomb
BBC 50 Things that made the Modern Economy Podcast
Tomorrow’s World – How AI could seize power
Reading lists
- Critical GIS/ digital geographies reading list
- A very useful and comprehensive reading list by Matt Wilson (Kentucky) for a masters level course.
- Code/space or geographies produced through digital tech, reading list
- A reading list I composed a while ago that links to lots of relevant material.
- The Programmable Cities project
- A five-year EU-funded research project (based in Ireland) led by Prof. Rob Kitchin concerning the development of ‘smart cities’. Lots of videos of presentations and papers to look at and download.