We Count/Digging DEEPer Webinar Series
In today’s world, numbers are in the ascendancy. Societies dominated by star ratings, scores, likes and lists are rapidly emerging, as data are collected on virtually every aspect of our lives. From annual university rankings, ratings agencies and fitness tracking technologies to our credit score and health status, everything and everybody is measured and evaluated. Join Steffen Mau, Virginia Eubanks and Jutta Treviranus in conversation for a critical analysis of this increasingly pervasive phenomenon.
April 28, 2021, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM (EDT)
Captions and ASL provided.
Register here for the free webinar
Panelists:
Dr. Steffen Mau works in the fields of comparative welfare research, social inequality and European integration. In his most recent book, The Metric Society: On the Quantification of the Social, Steffen Mau shows how metrics have become a form of social conditioning and how the rise of quantification has strengthened social hierarchies.
Virginia Eubanks is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, SUNY. She is the author of Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor; Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age; and co-editor, with Alethia Jones, of Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith. Her writing about technology and social justice has appeared in Scientific American, The Nation, Harper’s, and Wired. For two decades, Eubanks has worked in community technology and economic justice movements. She was a founding member of the Our Data Bodies Project and a 2016–2017 Fellow at New America. She lives in Troy, NY.
Jutta Treviranus is a full Professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCADU) in Toronto, Canada. She is the Director and Founder of the Inclusive Design Research Centre (IDRC) and the Inclusive Design Institute (IDI). Treviranus is a world expert in the field of Inclusive Design and has made appearances at the White House and the United Nations. An outspoken opponent of the scientific method and statistical reasoning, she has "led many international multi‐partner research networks that have created broadly implemented technical innovations that support inclusion." Her work has included designing open source content and helping implement accessibility legislation, standards, and specifications. In 2013, the Governor General of Canada awarded Treviranus the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal. ZoomerMedia chose Treviranus as one of Canada's Top 45 over 45 in 2012.