No more whoopsie!
Typing station designed by Luigi Colani (1928-2019), combining a typewriter, a chair, and headphones.
Hi, selamat berjumpa kembali (we meet again) in a new home for Two Kinds of Intelligence sent from buttondown.email. It's good to see you again, and I hope the feeling is mutual.
I am not going to lie that I had been contemplating to just remain at Substack, despite clearly making my stand in my last edition there. Substack, inevitably, just like many other platforms, will have no qualms abdicating their moral responsibility the moment their platforms start making money. And I do understand that there is no completely ethical platforms out there. We do hear this a lot. It feels radical, and somehow also shallow, to demand a tech or a media company to just do one thing right — at least, not harming others or complicit in employing people who relish in harming others.
But staying (in Substack) would mean, to me exactly doing that — complicit in harming others. And unfortunately, that's how a lot of unethical tech practices and products start, "it's an oversight", "we do not mean to hurt other people", "unintended consequence" etc. This is how the 'unintended consequence' of a platform meant to rate the physical attractiveness of people, grew up over time to have a massive role in eroding democracy, and we are too helpless to do much because we, our friends, and our families are held hostage there, voluntarily or not. This is how the 'unintended consequence' of a platform, meant for us to have all the answers we need at the tip of your fingers, to massively mine our personal data without consent & even so, with vague terminologies, and sell them to other companies so that we are made to buy things from them. And what do we get? Telur (Malay for 'egg', meant to imply 'nothing', 'nada').
In addressing Tim Berners-Lee’s talk at ODI Summit in 2019 — did anyone get goosebumps seeing all the crowd and filled seats? Cannot relate now — The Engine Room co-founder, Alix Dunn said,
I wish we could stop using the phrase ‘unintended consequences’ about harm in tech. It implies a) that positive intent of the maker matters and that it should be assumed b) that ‘thinking’ about possible harms is the bar for responsibility and c) that whoopsies is sufficient.
I read through it again and it gives me a change of perspective, the same way I came across how we should not talk about these harms as biases — for it insinuates individual accountability instead of the systemic flaw to which it originated — and thought about it, ‘unintended’, who am I kidding?
So I intend to leave, and I did — and who knows if Buttondown also might be sellout (although touch wood!), or I might have the time and patience to finally sit down and set up a low-tech, FLOSS newsletter platform of my own? That's something to figure out later.
Until now, make yourself at home. Tea?
READING IN MY TABS
- “When you measure, include the measurer."
- Very much enjoying and learning a lot from this interview with social design researcher Sarah Fathallah, especially on using critical reflexivity to avoid falling into the buckets of ignoring the needs of communities for design in the social sector.
- Fascinating story on the commercialisation of the missed calls culture in India — a culture that was once so pervasive when I was younger (as far as I remember) as data plans were so expensive to us, so we relied on the language of missed calls as a way to briefly communicate, “I was thinking of you!”, “I am on the way!” etc.
- “I’m a constant student. Just because I, Mariame Kaba, can’t imagine something doesn’t mean that thing isn’t valuable or that thing can’t be undone or done. It’s possible to think about statelessness, so I look to others who have spent the time doing the intellectual and practical work that it’s going to take to do something different. It really doesn’t matter if I, as an individual, can’t imagine a thing. It matters that there are people imagining that thing.” I am continually in awe of the mind and the vision of abolitionist and transformative justice activist Mariame Kaba, and how despite being exposed to harmful and violent ideas of today’s carceral and punitive justice in the work she is doing, her words remain gentle, kind, and hopeful. I am also saving up to buy her book, We Do This ‘til We Free Us.
- “I have a theory that all female group chats end up in the same conversation: planning a commune.” Excuse me are my group chats with my female friends surveilled??? (The answer is absolute yes if you are not on Signal, but anyway)
- “This thesis explores how information design helps cat owners understand their cats by creating a notational system that describes cat body language and behavior. The designed new notational system, based on an arrangement composed of over 10,000 photographs, provides an opportunity of creating visualization for the behavior of cats. “ A thesis I should be writing.
- When I first arrived in the UK to do my MA, I got so frustrated when the names of the places do not quite correspond to how they are spelled e.g. Ruislip, Marylebone etc. Never knew there are more irregularly spelt places in the country and this is even a non-exhaustive list!
- “I do not love my country. Its abstract splendor is beyond my grasp. But (although it sounds bad) I would give my life for ten places in it, for certain people, seaports, pinewoods, various figures from history, mountains (and three or four rivers).”
RESOURCES AND TOOLKITS
- Trauma Aware Teaching Checklist.
- Afrofeminist Data Futures is project to "seek to better understand how feminist movements in sub-Saharan Africa can be empowered through the production, sharing and use of gender data, and how this knowledge can be translated into actionable recommendations for private technology companies in terms of how they share non-commercial datasets".
- Critical Disinformation Studies syllabus “as a provocation to disinformation researchers to rethink many of the assumptions of our nascent field [...] taking a critical approach to research on platforms, politics, and information which incorporates history, inequality, power, and culture.”
STATUS BOARD
- Reading: Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement, and Ausma Zehanat Khan’s The Unquiet Dead. My friend Alia recommended this online Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) fantasy called A Tale of Crowns set in the period around Classical Antiquity and inspired from Kurdish background. The worldbuilding! The representation!
- Listening: “What is this going to do at a societal level to different groups. Will it affect inequalities? Will some groups be particularly disadvantaged? What about those in precarious employment, for example? How does this interact with other forms of discrimination—or forms of over surveillance under some groups?” On vaccine passports, while feeling Impfneid that a huge portion of our country, including frontliners, are still not vaccinated. This country’s unchosen leadership is a joke.
- Watching: Coded Bias on Netflix. If watching The Social Dilemma left you a bad taste in your moral palate, then please watch this documentary.
- Food & Drink: Made some fried chicken with shallots to go with brown rice, and... perhaps, that's it.