Data Agency: Individual or Shared? | Matt Prewitt, Nick Vincent, and Kaliya Young in Conversation With Jennifer Morone

Digital networks have centralized power over identities and information, creating problems for both markets and democracy. Does the solution require more shared agency over data? What might that look like? This panel discussion is structured around thought experiments to find solutions to this issue. 

SPEAKERS 

Matt Prewitt is RadicalxChange Foundation’s president, a writer and blockchain industry advisor, and a former plaintiff’s side antitrust and consumer class action litigator and federal law clerk. 

Nick Vincent is a Ph.D. student in Northwestern University's Technology and Social Behavior program and is part of the People, Space, and Algorithms Research Group. His broad research interests include human-computer interaction, human-centered machine learning, and social computing. His research focuses on studying the relationships between human-generated data and computing technologies to mitigate the negative impacts of these technologies. His work relates to concepts such as "data dignity", "data as labor", "data leverage", and "data dividends". 

Kaliya Young also known as the "Identity Woman" has spent the last 15 years working to bring about the creation of a new layer of the internet for people based on open standards. She co-founding the Internet Identity Workshop, which was recently profiled in the Wired UK. In 2017 she graduated in the very first cohort from UT Austin's iSchool with a Master of Science in Identity Management and Security. Her master's thesis The Domains of Identity: A framework for understanding identity systems in contemporary society is being published this month by Anthem Press. In 2019, she traveled to India for two months as a New America India-US Public Interest Technology fellow to study Aadhaar their national ID system. She co-founded HumanFirst.Tech with Shireen Mitchel, a project focused on creating space for diverse voices and building a more inclusive industry. In 2012 she was recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and Fast Company named her as one of the most influential women in tech in 2009. She consults with governments, NGO’s, startups, and enterprises on decentralized identity technologies. 

MODERATOR 

Jennifer Morone is the CEO of RadicalxChange Foundation and a multidisciplinary visual artist, activist, and filmmaker. Her work focuses on the human experience in relation to technology, economics, politics, and identity, and the moral and ethical issues that arise from such systems. Her interests lie in exploring ways of creating social justice and equal distribution of the future. Morone is a trained sculptor with BFA from SUNY Purchase and earned her MA in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art in London with Dunne and Raby. Her work has been presented at institutions, festivals, museums, and galleries around the world including ZKM, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Ars Electronica, HEK, the Martin Gropius Bau, the Science Gallery, Transmediale, SMBA, Carroll/Fletcher Gallery, panke.gallery, Aksioma, Drugo more, and featured extensively on international media outlets such as The Economist, WIRED, WMMNA, Vice, the Guardian, BBC World News, Tagesspiegel, Netzpolitik, the Observer.