This week has started with two very interesting events. On Monday I went to the opening keynote of the Existential Terrain Conference to listen to Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Brown University, USA. The title of Wendy’s lecture was “Proxy Politics: From Global Climate Change to Racial Profiling”. Wendy raised very interesting issues on the materiality of information and algorithms and how they become proxies that make decisions based on people’s online connections even when they’re silent and do not say anything.
Today (Tuesday) was another stimulating day with Ann Light giving a talk at our Department. Ann is a Professor of Design and Creative Technology at the University of Sussex and she talked about ”Framing Wonder: Beyond Design for Existential Crisis”. In her talk, she discussed the role of CHI and designers of technology in addressing existential and world crisis such as climate change, mass migration, escalating refugee numbers, austerity policies, etc. Ann’s talk drew on her the paper she presented at CHI earlier this year.