Week 2

Lesson 1 Introduction

• Course Syllabus.
  Please read through the syllabus

Lesson 2 Humans & Morality

• Pinker (2008). The Moral Instinct.
• Singer, P. (1999). The Singer Solution to World Poverty. New York Times Magazine.
• Haidt (2008). The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives. Ted Talk.

Week 3

Lesson 3 Intro to Moral Philosophy

• Sandel, Michael J. (2009). Chapter 1. Doing the Right Thing. Justice: What's the right thing to do?.

• Sandel, Michael J. (2009). Chapter 2. Utilitarianism.
• Sandel, Michael J. (2009). Chapter 3. Libertarianism.
• Sandel, Michael J. (2009). Chapter 5. Kant.

Lesson 4 Technology & Human Values

• Winner, Langdon (1980). Do Artifacts Have Politics? Daedalus.
• Benjamin, Ruha (2019). Introduction. Race After Technology.
  Only the introduction is available on Canvas. Please see syllabus for access options for the remaining chapters.

Week 4

Lesson 5 Race & Social Categories

• Benjamin, Ruha (2019). Chapter 1. Engineered Inequity. Race After Technology.
• Hannah-Jones, Nikole (Aug. 14, 2019). The Idea of America. New York Times Magazine.

• This American Life (Feb. 14, 2020). Get Back to Where You Once Belonged. WBEZ Chicago & NPR.
  People looking everywhere to find a place—any place—where, for once, they don't have to be the odd man out.

Lesson 6 Categories & Classification Systems

• Massey, Douglas (2007). Chapter 1. How Stratification Works. Categorically unequal: The American stratification system.

• Bowker & Star (1998). Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. Introduction. MIT Press.
• Vargas, Jose Antonio (June, 2011). My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant.
• McDermott, Ray (1993). The acquisition of a child by a learning disability. Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity and Context .

Week 5

Lesson 7 Media Representation

• Noble, Safiya Umoja (2018). Searching for black girls. Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism.
• (December 18, 2016). The Long and Brutal History of Fake News. Politico.

• Lam, Jenny (October, 2020). AR, Augmenting the Reality of Bias in Tech. Computing, Ethics, & Society Midterm Paper.
• Baum, Teá (October, 2020). Racial Capitalism in the Age of TikTok. Computing, Ethics, & Society Midterm Paper.
• Hall, Stuart (1995). Ch2. The whites of their eyes: Racist ideologies and the media. Gender, Race, & Class in Media.

Lesson 8 Surveillance: Part 1

• Benjamin, Ruha (2019). Chapter 3. Coded Exposure. Race After Technology.
• Black Mirror (Oct. 21, 2016). Nosedive, Season 3, Episode 1. Netflix.
  If you don't have Netflix, you can purchase it for $1.99 on Amazon

Week 6

Lesson 9 Technological Solutionism / Benevolence

• Benjamin, Ruha (2019). Chapter 4. Technological Benevolence. Race After Technology.
• Madrigal, Alexis (March, 2013). Toward a Complex, Realistic, and Moral Tech Criticism.

• Morozov, Evgeny (April, 2020). The tech ‘solutions’ for coronavirus take the surveillance state to the next level.
• Gladwell, Malcolm (September, 2010). Why the revolution will not be Tweeted. The New Yorker.

Big Data

• boyd, danah and Crawford, Kate (May, 2012). Provocations for big data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon. Information, Communication & Society.

Week 7

Surveillance: Part 2 (with Shazeda Ahmed)

• Ahmed, Shazeda (May, 2019). The Messy Truth About Social Credit (China). Logic Magazine.
• Marda, Vidushi & Ahmed, Shazeda (Jan, 2021). Emotional Entanglement: China's emotion recognition market and its implications for human rights. Article 19.

• Galligan, Rosenfeld, Kleinman, & Parthasarathy (2020). Cameras in the Classroom: Facial Recognition Technology in Schools. University of Michigan Technology Assessment Project.

Lesson 12 AI: Part 1

• Joler, Vladan and Pasquinelli, Matteo (2020). The Nooscope Manifested: AI as Instrument of Knowledge Extractivism.
• Interview with Kevin Kelly (Co-founder of Wired Magazine) Through AI, we’re going to invent many new types of thinking. IBM Blog.

• Johnson, Patrick & Benjamin, Ruha (Thu, February 18, 6:30-8PM). Dialogue with the Dean: Ruha Benjamin. NU School of Communication.
• Katz, Yarden (2017). Manufacturing an Artificial Intelligence Revolution.

Week 8

AI: Part 2

• Shalini Kantayya (2020). Coded Bias.
  Movie password: NWUVIEWCB
• Fjeld, Jessica; Achten, Nele; Hilligoss, Hannah; Nagy, Adam; Srikumar, Madhulika (Jan 2020). Principled Artificial Intelligence: Mapping Consensus in Ethical and Rights-Based Approaches to Principles for AI. Berkman Klein Center Research Publication.

• Fjeld et al. (Jan 2020). Principled AI: Graphic.
• (Jan 2020). Q&A: Jessica Fjeld on a New Berkman Klein Study of AI Ethical Principles.
• Benjamin, Ruha (2019). Ch 2. Default Discrimination: Is the Glitch Systematic? Race After Technology.

Lesson 14 Platforms: Content Moderation

• Jonathan Zittrain (2020). Between Suffocation and Abdication: Three Eras of Governing Digital Platforms (video lecture) . Tanner Lecture (Harvard).
• Gillespie, Tarleton (2018). Chapter 1. All platforms moderate. Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, content moderation, and the hidden decisions that shape social media.

• Klonick, Kate (2018). The New Governors: The People, Rules, and Processes Governing Free Speech. Harvard Law Review, 131.

Week 9

AI: Part 2 (Lucy Vasserman, Google)

• The Current: Toxicity. Google.
  Just Published: online magazine about the work.
• Jigsaw. Google.
  Please analyze the Jigsaw website (it's mission, it's approach, etc.), and come with questions for Lucy.

Lesson 16 Platforms: Business Models

• Maréchal, Nathalie & Roberts Biddle, Ellery (2020). It's Not Just the Content, It's the Business Model: Democracy’s Online Speech Challenge. Open Technology Institute.

• (2019). The Great Hack. Netflix.
• Gillespie, T. (2010). The politics of ‘platforms’. New Media & Society 12(3), 347-364.

Week 10

Lesson 17 Business Models Continued

Course Synthesis

• Benjamin, Ruha (2019). Chapter 5. Retooling Solidarity, Reimagining Justice. Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code .
• Jonathan Zittrain (2020). Between Suffocation and Abdication: Three Eras of Governing Digital Platforms (video lecture) . Tanner Lecture (Harvard).
• Maréchal, Nathalie & Roberts Biddle, Ellery (2020). It's Not Just the Content, It's the Business Model: Democracy’s Online Speech Challenge. Open Technology Institute.
• Benesch, Susan (n.d.). Proposals for Improved Regulation of Harmful Online Content. Dangerous Speech Project.
• Gillespie, Tarleton (2018). Chapter 8. What platforms are and what they should be. Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, content moderation, and the hidden decisions that shape social media.
• Fjeld, Jessica; Achten, Nele; Hilligoss, Hannah; Nagy, Adam; Srikumar, Madhulika (Jan 2020). Principled Artificial Intelligence: Mapping Consensus in Ethical and Rights-Based Approaches to Principles for AI. Berkman Klein Center Research Publication.
• All Tech Is Human. Guide to Responsible Tech: How to Get Involved & Build a Better Tech Future.
• Li, Hanlin et al How do people change their technology use in protest? CSCW.
• Vincent, et al “Data Strikes”: Evaluating the Effectiveness of a New Form of Collective Action Against Technology Companies.

Week 11