https://algosov.org/

Algorithmic Sovereignty is a collective place of documentation gathering research, developments, events and projects related to the topic.
Participants of the project are actively looking for solutions to the problem of powerful hidden algorithms which incorporate invisible logic, though their results are manifest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLcPNMDfEz2hInGx5lj77-4uCu0BqfgfSY&v=BhfFbFKn2tA

Prof. Itty Abraham, National University of Singapore on Friday, changed the title to Technology and the Political: Confrontation and Recognition.   He put Rohingya study in the STS (science Technology and Society Frame toward the end of his lecture.. see https://youtube.com/embed/YhTy_vjeB6U?start=2394&end=2877

Main points in ppt: 

Broad Technopolitical Vectors

-Older STS traditions: technology as a condition of modernity leading to dystopia, but also as liberator (household technologies, vaccines..

From Politics to Technology – Inserting political values into the technological system

From Technology to Politics – ie manipulation of politics using technology or the absence of it.. Inserting the technological into the political field.

Opening up the Political Field..

Going beyond political binaries – reinforcing inequalities v/s offering new tools for taking back control

Toward a Global STS : technosciences emergent from the informal sectors of gloabal cities like kuala Lumpur, Mumbai, Nairobi, Mexico city...

The other byte that may interest us were in response to questions by Sujatha Raman on radical democracy and Anushree Gupta in the Webinar.. he explained his suggestion was a Global STS saying that STS has mainly been seen as an anti-western stream, a post colonial science and that he would like to posit Global STS as an attempt to expand STS boundaries to include other locations of discourse. He gives the example of Informal Mumbai, where waste is a resource in the people, machine, environment spectrum, or situations where existing life is precarious and therefore risk analysis of technological intervention is marginalised.. or what he calls “contact zones” between heterogenous people, ideas, technologies, are the starting point of discourse.. https://youtube.com/embed/YhTy_vjeB6U?start=5113&end=5529

At KICS we have been talking about this in different ways.. but perhaps someone would like to lead a discussion in one of our “third-Saturday-sharings” ie STS on TSS?

The bulk of the lecture spoke about how the Rohingya Diaspora/Refugess have use the Spectacle Football , Rohingya TV as well as use Block Chain technology for refugee ID purposes.  The close association of social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter) with the so-called “Arab Spring” popular movements has reinforced our collective understanding of new media technologies as a great political disruptor. Under some circumstances, digital media can become a force multiplier for an unarmed public against a repressive state. Such a politics of confrontation should be seen as a tactical use of technology, facing certain inherent limits. Political technologies can be strategic as well, however, going far beyond the direct encounter of a movement and state to threaten state legitimacy, as this case study will discuss. My examination of a KL-based Rohingya diaspora group explores the long-term strategic implications of what I call the politics of recognition through discussion of two techno-political moments – the group’s negotiations with the Unicode Consortium to make the Rohingya script visible on electronic screens and efforts to use blockchain to create a transnational refugee database.

Do we have Right to Know about about  things that going to run our lives ?

Google fired staff scientist Margaret Mitchell after she questioned an order not to publish a study saying AI that mimics language could hurt marginalized populations. Officially, her violations "included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees". 

 In December, AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru was fired for exposing bias in facial analysis systems.

the company was starting to censor papers critical of its products.  https://www.gadgetsnow.com/tech-news/google-fires-second-ai-ethics-leader-as-dispute-over-research-diversity-grows/articleshow/81121707.cms

In India recently we have stopped "publicly funded" academic institutions from holding zoom webinars with foreigners without MEA permission, which means every college, university, school, laboratory which has received any kind of grant, loan from Government.. 

Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIXhnWUmMvw 

Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff . "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,"  how the biggest tech companies deal with our data. How do we regain control of our data? What is surveillance capitalism?

In this documentary, Zuboff takes the lid off Google and Facebook and reveals a merciless form of capitalism in which no natural resources, but the citizen itself, serves as a raw material. How can citizens regain control of their data?

It is 2000, and the dot.com crisis has caused deep wounds. How will startup Google survive the bursting of the internet bubble? Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin don't know anymore how to turn the tide. By chance, Google discovers that the "residual data" that people leave behind in their searches on the internet is very precious and tradable.

This residual data can be used to predict the behavior of the internet user. Internet advertisements can, therefore, be used in a very targeted and effective way. A completely new business model is born: "surveillance capitalism."