The Good Robot
Join Dr Eleanor Drage and Dr Kerry McInerney as they ask the experts: what is good technology? Is ‘good’ technology even possible? And how can feminism help us work towards it? Each week, they invite scholars, industry practitioners, activists, and more to provide their unique perspective on what feminism can bring to the tech industry and the way that we think about technology. With each conversation, The Good Robot asks how feminism can provide new perspectives on technology’s biggest problems.
The Good Robot
Facebook ‘Friendship’ and Predicting the Future with Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
In this episode, we chat with Professor Wendy Chun, who is Simon Fraser University's Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media. As both an expert in Systems Design Engineering and English Literature, her extraordinary analysis of contemporary digital media bridges the humanities and STEM sciences to think through some of the most pressing technical and conceptual issues in technology today. Wendy discusses her most recent book, Discriminating Data, where she explains what is actually happening in AI systems that people claim can predict the future, why facebook friendship has forced the idea that friendship is bidirectional, and how technology is being built on the principle of homophily, the idea that similarity breeds connection.