Week 1

Course Introduction

• Course Syllabus.

Day 1

Week 2

Land Extractions

• Crawford, K. (2021). Earth, The Atlas of AI.
  • Important to note here the missing citations in Crawford's work from several Data & Society lab members who researched and brought up ideas from the book prior to Crawford's writing. See some details here.

Day 2

Human Extractions

• The Story of Stuff Project (2010). The Story of Electronics, The Story of Stuff Project.
• Adjei, A. (2014). Life in Sodom and Gomorrah: the world's largest digital dump, The Guardian.
• Ojewale, O. (2022). Mining and illicit trading of coltan in the Democratic Republic of Congo, ENACT.
  • This video is a brief summary of a larger report on the topic. You can check out the full report here.

Day 3

Week 3

Do Artifacts Have Politics?

• Winner, L. (1980). Do Artifacts Have Politics?, Daedalus.
  • Feel free to watch this video as a primer (but not substitute!) to the article

• Kneese, T. (2024). Measuring Justice: Field Notes on Algorithmic Impact Assessments, Data & Society: Points.

Day 3

Human BioTechnologies

• Brashear, R. (2013). Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement (Documentary), New Day Films.

• Weise, J. (2018). Common Cyborg, Granta.
• Forlano, L. (2023). When Things Go Beep in the Night: The AI system that is keeping me alive is ruining my life, Data & Society: Points.

Day 5

Week 4

The Creation of Race

• Au, W. (2007). Chapter Two - Inheriting Inequality: Standardized Testing and The Rationality of Social Control, Unequal by design: High-stakes testing and the standardization of inequality.
• Hannah-Jones, N. (2019). Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true., New York Times.
• Hurwitz, L. & Bourque, S. (2014). Settler Colonialism Primer, Unsettling America: Decolonization in Theory & Practice.
• Roth, W., van Stee, E., & Regla-Vargas, A. (2023). Conceptualizations of Race: Essentialism and Constructivism, Annual Review of Sociology.
  • Text available in HTML format or as a PDF.

• Au, W. (2009). Unequal by design: high-stakes testing and the standardization of inequality, Routledge.
• Harris, C. (1993). Whiteness as Property, Harvard Law Review.
• Katz, W. L. (2012). Black Indians: a hidden heritage, Atheneum Books for Young Readers.
• Omi, M & Winant, H. (1989). Racial formation in the United States, Routledge.
• Takaki, R. (2008). A different mirror: a history of multicultural America, Back Bay Books.
• Tuck, E. & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor, Atheneum Books for Young Readers.
  • Slavery is a Metaphor: A Critical Commentary on Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” is a great follow up read!

Day 6

Implications of Race

• Sociology Live! (2015). Cultural Capital, YouTube.
• Locks, A. (2017). Summary of Yosso's Cultural Wealth Model, Pitzer College.
• Student Life and Leadership Student Affairs (2018). USEM Session 5 - Cultural Wealth, YouTube.
• Multiple Authors (Multiple Years). Let's talk about race... [Video Playlist], YouTube.

• McIntosh, P. (1989). White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, Peace and Freedom Magazine.
• Multiple Authors (Multiple Years). Become an Anti-Racist [Video Playlist], YouTube.
• Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital?, Race, Ethnicity and Education.

Day 7

Week 5

Tech Ethics & Moral Philosophy

• Bietti, E. (2021). From Ethics Washing to Ethics Bashing: A View on Tech Ethics from Within Moral Philosophy, SSRN Electronic Journal (Paper) | Centre for Ethics (Video).
  • You may choose to read the paper or watch the author's lecture on it.
• Williams, R., Smarr, S., Prioleau, D., & Gilbert, J. E. (2022). Oh No, Not Another Trolley! On the Need for a Co-Liberative Consciousness in CS Pedagogy, IEEE Journals & Magazine.
  • Only read the intro. To access reading, click "PDF" and then "Access through your institution". Once you find Northwestern, you should be redirected to logging in and should be able to access the reading.

• Vallor, S., Green, B., & Raicu, I. (2018). Overview of Ethics in Tech Practice, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

Day 8

Professional Tech Ethics & Solutionism

• Association for Computing Machinery (2018). ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, Association for Computing Machinery.
  • The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is the largest organization of/for computing professionals. They host major CS conferences and are the biggest publishers of CS research.

• Morozov, E. (2014). Against Solutionism, DLD Conference.
• Tucker, I. (2013). We are abandoning all the checks and balances, The Guardian.
  • This article uses ableist and sanist language which we should try to avoid.

Day 9

Week 6

The New Jim Code

• Benjamin, R. (2019). Introduction, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code.
  • Log in with Northwestern to access readings: You can download a PDF version or read it online.
• Buolamwini, J. (2018). AI, Ain't I a Woman?, YouTube.

Day 10

(Un)Intentionality

• Parvin, N. & Pollock, A. (2020). Unintended by Design: On the Political Uses of “Unintended Consequences”, Engaging Science,Technology, and Society.

• Kantayya, S. (2020). Coded Bias, Netflix.
  • We recognize not everyone may have access to Netflix and as such have uploaded a version to Canvas. Also, this could be a great opportunity to come together (covid-safely, of course) with your learning pods and watch together in shared physical space!
• McIlwain, C. (2020). Of course technology perpetuates racism. It was designed that way., MIT Technology Review.

Day 11

Week 7

The Power of Algorithms

• Noble, S. U. (2018). Introduction, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.
  • Log in with Northwestern to access reading.

• Keyes, O. (2019). Counting the Countless: Why data science is a profound threat for queer people, Real Life Magazine.
• Mehrotra, D. (2024). Cops Used DNA to Predict a Suspect’s Face—and Tried to Run Facial Recognition on It, Wired.

Day 12

Racial & Data Capitalism

• Hannah-Jones, N. (2023). (Racial) Capitalism (Episode 4), The 1619 Project (Hulu Series).
  • We recognize not everyone may have access to Hulu and as such have uploaded a version to Canvas. Also, this could be a great opportunity to come together (covid-safely, of course) with your learning pods and watch together in shared physical space!
• Milner, Y., & Traub, A. (2020). Data Capitalism, Data for Black Lives.
• Takahashi, A., Wang, S., & Li, C. (2020). Oh, the Places Your Data Will Go!, Free Radicals.

Day 13

Week 8

Reimagining Land Relations

• Kimmerer, R. W. (2015). The Sacred and the Superfund, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.
  • Log in with Northwestern to access reading.

Day 12

Reimagining the Internet & Data Governance

• Bailey, M. (2021). An Ethical Internet?, Just Tech.
• Research Data Alliance International Indigenous Data Sovereignty Interest Group (2019). CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance, The Global Indigenous Data Alliance.

Day 15

Week 9

Reimagining CS Education

• Jones, S. T. & melo, n. a. (2021). We Tell These Stories to Survive: Towards Abolition in Computer Science Education, Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education.
  • Text available in HTML format or as a PDF.

Day 14

Tech for/in War

• Davies, H., McKernan, B., & Sabbagh, D. (2023). ‘The Gospel’: how Israel uses AI to select bombing targets in Gaza, The Guardian.
• SenGupta, S. (2017). Killer App, Hulu.
  • We recognize not everyone may have access to Netflix and as such have uploaded a version to Canvas. Also, this could be a great opportunity to come together (covid-safely, of course) with your learning pods and watch together in shared physical space!

Day 17

Week 10

Choose your own adventure + Final Presentations

• Record and upload your final presentation to Flip.
  • For information about what's expected for your presentation, please refer to the final project page.

• A 'Recommended (Optional)' reading from any of the previous weeks.
• A 'Choose one' reading you haven't already done from any of the previous weeks.
• A resource from our resource page.
• A reading from other iterations of the course that you haven't already done.

Day 17

Week 11