The Data Fix with Dr. Mél Hogan
Hi everyone, my name is Mél Hogan and I’m a critical media studies scholar based in Canada. I’m working on a project called The Data Fix through a series of conversations with scholars, thinkers and feelers. Together we explore the significance of living in a world of data, and especially the growing trend of “digital humans” in the form of chatbots, holograms, deepfakes, ai images and videos, and even tech that revives the dead. The conversations are minimally edited, and serve as an archive of the collective thinking and feeling that is going into the Data Fix project. Please see thedatafix.net for more details and show notes. Thank you so much for listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Latest episodes
Jan 20, 2023 • 48min
Terror, with Olivia Snow
Olivia Snow and I chat about the social implications of Lensa, technically a picture editor for selfies and photo retouching, or “an all-in-one image editing app that takes your photos to the next level”. We unpack how AI image apps like Lensa amplify racism, misogyny, transphobia and hatred of sex workers, while also providing a potential way to thwart expectations of ‘real’ representation. Recorded Dec 10, 2022. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jan 10, 2023 • 49min
Allure, with Luke Munn
Luke Munn and I discuss the allure of ChatGPT technology. ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool driven by AI technology that allows you to have human-like conversations and much more with a chatbot. For me, one of the great insights from our conversation is that media scholars should pay attention to the meaning-making that happens culturally, even as technologies and their underlying logics are being/have been debunked. Recorded Dec 7, 2022.Munn, Ferocious Logics: Unmaking the Algorithm (2018)https://meson.press/books/ferocious-logics/Munn, Logic of Feeling: Technology's Quest to Capitalize Emotion (2020)https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538148358/Logic-of-Feeling-Technology%27s-Quest-to-Capitalize-EmotionMunn, Automation is a Myth (2022)https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=34899&bottom_ref=subjectMagee, Arora, and Munn, "Structured Like a Language Model: Analysing AI as an Automated Subject" (preprint)https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.05058Munn, "The Uselessness of AI Ethics" https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43681-022-00209-w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jan 1, 2023 • 60min
Grievance, with Sarah T. Roberts
In this first episode of The Data Fix, I speak with Dr. Sarah T. Roberts, an expert in commercial content moderation and THE cultural critic we need right now, on all things tech & society related. We begin our discussion about how moderation on social media works, and what it presumes to parse out or let through, and explore for whose sake moderation is done. Because we focus on affect and feeling(s) in this series, we also discuss what it is about technology (and the Internet in particular) that has created such divisions in our worlds — specifically, what can we learn by asking about the legitimate grievances of the (lie-filled, meme-driven, bot-happy,) political right in the US and Canadian contexts? Recorded Dec 7, 2022.Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300261479/behind-the-screen/ Modulating Moderation (Overton window mentioned) https://mediarxiv.org/wvp8cAlgorithmic amplification of politics on Twitter https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/rml-politicalcontentFuture Fetishists https://www.boundary2.org/2019/08/sarah-t-roberts-and-mel-hogan-left-behind-futurist-fetishists-prepping-and-the-abandonment-of-earth/Digital Detritus https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/8283 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
