Presented at
Still Hacking Anyway (SHA2017),
Aug. 7, 2017, 7:05 p.m.
(60 minutes)
We can intentionally build and improve the sociotechnical systems of which we are a part, or we can be haphazard in the worlds we create. The things which we personally find fulfilling and useful may not hold true at scale. This talk lays a framework for approaching societal-level change through being scientifically minded and taking active steps to test and implement greater equality and autonomy while respecting both.
Weaponized Social was a series of events, discussions, actions, and surrounding community over the course of 2015 used to examine the network effects of human interaction, to encourage the healthy and to <strong>de</strong>weaponize the powerful tools at our fingertips. This talk reviews the lessons we learned about inequalities and institutional violence, the processes and tools for exploiting or combatting it, and personal responsibility.
#Society #Sharing
The predictable ways in which humans interact are called "scripts," and we learn them from the people and media around us. The direct physical, emotional, and other harms of running buggy scripts while in smaller, geographically-constrained groups are well understood. These same bugs are now being amplified due to network effects through institutions, global culture, and online interaction. The methods we have used in the past to still strive towards equality and autonomy in light of these bugs are now even less complete, and we must find ways to patch against their exploitation.
Is large-scale coercion a form of violence? Are laws or expectations applied unequally (such as the US prison system) a form of institutional violence? Does unequal income across race and gender count as systemic violence? Each of these diminishes an individual's ability to act autonomously. These network effects are (currently) more difficult to point to/prove than physical violence, in no small part because we are only beginning to document and study them.
I (along with others) spent attention in 2014 & 2015 studying the network effects of buggy social scripts with a project called Weaponized Social. We have four main fulcrums for social change which will be explored during the talk:
<ul><li><strong>Laws</strong> are explicitly stated codes of behavior, created and enforced through governance systems.</li>
<li><strong>Norms</strong> are often implicit social expectations, enforced through social pressure and assumptions of media and other communications.</li>
<li><strong>Markets</strong> shape behavior by making some actions more or less expensive financially or time.</li>
<li><strong>Architecture/Code</strong> are the frameworks that surround us and must be adhered to because we act within them.</li></ul>
If we agree that systemic violence is real and should be alleviated, what would using these four fulcrums to combat it look like? There won't be a single silver bullet, but a collection of approaches which may help slowly progress us towards a world where more people are equitable and autonomous. While I don't have any answers, I do have stories of failure, some possible intervention points (including metrics!), and suggestions in how to navigate policies and tools which could also be used by governments to find, target, and quash dissent.
Presenters:
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willowbl00
I look at connections, systems, empowerment, and powerlessness and strives to both understand and improve whatever I find.
Willow Brugh, known as willowbl00, works with digital tools to enable coordination between response agencies and emergent response groups in areas affected by fast and slow crisis. She studies citizen engagement and combining distributed and centralized decision making structures at the <a href="http://civic.mit.edu">Center for Civic Media</a> at MIT's Media Lab. Previously she's been a Professor of Practice at <a href="http://brown.edu">Brown University</a>, an affiliate at the <a href="http://necsi.edu">New England Complex Systems Institute</a>, and a fellow at Harvard Law’s <a href="http://cyber.law.harvard.edu">Berkman Center for Internet and Society</a>.
Moderating transumanist discussion groups lacked direct action, so she cofounded a makerspace in Seattle. Those lacked scale, so she cofounded the <a href="http://schoolfactory.org">Space Federation</a> to legitimize and link hacker, maker, and coworking spaces across the US. Those lacked impact on inequality, so Willow cofounded <a href="http://gwob.org">Geeks Without Bounds</a> as an organizer and host of social good hackathons. Those lacked sustainability, so Geeks Without Bounds shifted into an accelerator for humanitarian projects. The capacity to use those tools and methods was lacking in the larger response space, so Willow became the Community Leadership Strategist at <a href="http://aspirationtech.org">Aspiration</a> to increase capacity in digital response.
In brief, Willow looks at connections, systems, empowerment, and powerlessness and strives to both understand and improve whatever she finds. Sometimes that’s with the Occupy Sandy Movement, sometimes it’s with the Naval Defense University.
She has transcendence tattoos that are impressive enough to be photographed for a National Geographic blog, and has keynoted the IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference. Willow has successfully worked with FEMA Field Innovation Team for Hurricane Sandy, and was awarded a ceremony at the White House for her contribution.
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