<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 16.05.2019, at 14:51, Thomas Kolar <<a href="mailto:tk@fsmat.at" class="">tk@fsmat.at</a>> wrote:</div><div class=""><div class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class="">Enlighten me - how is believing that technology should work for everyone, no matter what, considered being naive?<br class=""></blockquote>Since I believe this hasn't been answered:<br class=""></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div><br class=""></div><div>As a consequence of my naive originations, and since nobody really wanted to engage on it, I went on my own course of discovery and as a result I’ve since been tuning into Meredith Broussards’ immensely interesting body of work on this subject:</div><div><br class=""></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><a href="https://merbroussard.github.io" class="">https://merbroussard.github.io</a></div><div><br class=""></div><div>Re: technochauvinism</div><div><br class=""></div><div>"It comes from a particular kind of bias that says that mathematical and engineering problems are superior to human problems," Broussard said. <br class="">"Culture matters, social issues matter, and they matter just as much as solving mathematical and engineering problems."<br class="">"Technochauvinism creates a disconnect between what technology is capable of and what we think it can do.”</div><div><br class=""></div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">If a soap dispenser is only tested by white people, chances are that it won't<br class="">register hands of (some) PoC. </div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>True - and we have seen this happen many times over - e.g. Instagram filters that don’t work for non-whites.</div><div><br class=""></div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div class="">If medical studies only include amab people,<br class="">then the equipment designed using data from those studies might do unforeseen<br class="">weird shit when used on afab people, and unforeseen weird shit and medical<br class="">equipment are a bad combination. If a chatbot is trained on sample texts<br class="">written by a broad sample of people living in a sexist society, guess what<br class="">happens?<br class=""></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>What this indicates to me, is that we must always apply our technology to as broad a swath of people as possible, and strive harder to be inclusive in our application of technology to as wide a selection and variety of individuals as possible.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Which is why I still feel that the promotion of insular groups focused on technology in our community is a mistake.</div><div><br class=""></div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div class="">Now I kinda like your idea of technology as an equalizer, nonetheless - it is<br class="">true that the building blocks themselves are usually simple enough to be<br class="">unbiased. But then the question is how they are put together, and if we want<br class="">to use technology as an equalizer, we need to be mindful of how people enter<br class="">the equation.<br class=""><br class=""></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>Agreed.</div><div><br class=""></div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div class="">I believe that technology has both the potential to safeguard against bias and<br class="">the potential to amplify it.</div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>I believe one needs to also consider the successful cases carefully, too. Mobile computing has been a global success precisely because it is broadly applicable to so many cultures - there are definitely still edge cases (language inputs, etc.) - but in many ways it has been an extremely empowering tool for minorities. </div><div><br class=""></div><div>Which is why Broussards’ argument that technochauvinism is a balancing act rings very true. I believe all technologists, whatever our sexual, cultural, personal-identity persuasion, must keep this balancing act in mind.</div><div><br class=""></div><div><br class=""></div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div class=""><br class="">If you want tech to be unbiased, you should be in favor of increasing<br class="">representation for that reason alone.<br class=""><br class=""></div></div></blockquote><br class=""></div><div><br class=""></div><div>I agree completely, and by corollary, I believe the statement: “to be effective, technology must strive to be inclusive” is still just as true as ever. By extension, this means we, technologists, must always strive to apply ourselves outside our own in-groups. It seems to be an important aspect of all successful technology - that it was used outside the scope of the original creators own intention/target.</div><div><br class=""></div><br class=""><div class="">
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