[Petit Fours #417] On algorithmic workflows, public autonomous systems, and Nokia Design Archive
Hi, all! Here’s what I want to share with you today:
#1 In #ProudAdvisor news, Riyaj Shaikh will defend his dissertation The Work Practice of Platform-Mediated Food: An Ethnographic Study of Bridging Algorithmic Workflows and Situated Action at Stockholm University on Friday 28 February. Here’s a short abstract: “The thesis examines the work practice of platform-mediated food delivery. Combining ethnographic studies in India and Sweden, it highlights the friction between the platform’s representation of work and the ground realities shaping workers’ situated actions, including their economic concerns. The thesis contributes to the fields of Human-Computer Interaction and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, with an emphasis on worker-centered design and the critical role of human labor in gig work.”
#2 The WASP-HS Winter Conference 2025 will feature the first annual WASP-HS Exchange, a conversation between Mark Fagan and Petter Falk, moderated by Hannah Pelikan, on Democracy and/in the Autopilot: A Conversation on Power, Policy and Data in Public Autonomous Systems. And on the final day of the conference, we will present highlights from our project on ethics, with a short talk entitled Designing with our whole selves — letting felt ethics, somatic freedoms, and vulnerabilities come to the fore and shape design work. Both sessions are free and open to the public, no registration needed.
#3 I still love a good blog, and Lucy Bernholz has one. Bots v bots and public v private is a recent favorite post: “If more AI were tilted toward helping the little guy, I'd love AI a little more than I do (which is to say, I don't, because it's built by and for, centralized power).”
#4 For nostalgia, curiosa, and more, may I point you to the Nokia Design Archive.
-A