[Metalab] Techno-chauvinism (was Re: Frauen* bei Funkfeuer und in Meshnetzwerken)

[Jay Vaughan]

> On 16.05.2019, at 14:51, Thomas Kolar <tk at fsmat.at> wrote:
>> 
>> Enlighten me - how is believing that technology should work for everyone, no matter what, considered being naive?
> Since I believe this hasn't been answered:


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:

	https://merbroussard.github.io

Re: technochauvinism

"It comes from a particular kind of bias that says that mathematical and engineering problems are superior to human problems," Broussard said. 
"Culture matters, social issues matter, and they matter just as much as solving mathematical and engineering problems."
"Technochauvinism creates a disconnect between what technology is capable of and what we think it can do.”

> 
> If a soap dispenser is only tested by white people, chances are that it won't
> register hands of (some) PoC.

True - and we have seen this happen many times over - e.g. Instagram filters that don’t work for non-whites.


> If medical studies only include amab people,
> then the equipment designed using data from those studies might do unforeseen
> weird shit when used on afab people, and unforeseen weird shit and medical
> equipment are a bad combination. If a chatbot is trained on sample texts
> written by a broad sample of people living in a sexist society, guess what
> happens?

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.

Which is why I still feel that the promotion of insular groups focused on technology in our community is a mistake.


> Now I kinda like your idea of technology as an equalizer, nonetheless - it is
> true that the building blocks themselves are usually simple enough to be
> unbiased. But then the question is how they are put together, and if we want
> to use technology as an equalizer, we need to be mindful of how people enter
> the equation.
> 

Agreed.


> I believe that technology has both the potential to safeguard against bias and
> the potential to amplify it.

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.  

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.


> 
> If you want tech to be unbiased, you should be in favor of increasing
> representation for that reason alone.
> 


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.




j.
--
Jay Vaughan
http://primitur.at/
seclorum at icloud.com



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