COMMColloquium

Sociotechnical Dimensions of Agnotology

danah boyd, Partner Researcher, Microsoft Research and Distinguished Visiting Professor, Georgetown University

1:30pm | 102 Mann Library

Agnotology is the study of ignorance. In this talk, Dr. boyd will weave together lessons from three of her studies—those focused on media manipulation, the 2020 census, and kids' social media practices—to invite us to think more deeply about the role of ignorance in society. She will explore how ignorance is exploited by those trying to influence algorithms, how ignorance serves as a buffer for technocrats, and how ignorance is used to justify harmful design decisions and public policies. By looking more holistically at ignorance, danah will invite us to ask questions about the limitations and challenges of rapidly moving to embrace artificial intelligence in high-stakes contexts.

danah boyd is a Partner Researcher at Microsoft Research and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on the intersection of technology and society, with an eye to how structural inequities shape and are shaped by technologies. She is the author of It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens and founder of the independent research institute, Data & Society. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an advisory board member of Electronic Privacy Information Center. She received a bachelor's degree from Brown University, master's degree from the MIT Media Lab, and Ph.D in Information from the University of California, Berkeley.