Culture, Computation, and Society

What is the Culture, Computation, and Society Reading Group?

Computers are impacting all of our lives - let’s talk about it

The culture, computation, and society reading group was a student-led seminar that I co-organized and co-led with Adriana Knight from 2019-2021 at Swarthmore College. Composed of students, staff, and faculty from across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, we felt very strongly that the reading group should actively seek out and include individuals who aren’t the stereotypical STEM major. To quote one of our publicity emails: “This seminar is open to EVERYONE. Not just CS majors, not just CS students, but anyone who uses a computer (that’s you!).”

During our scheduled meetings, we mainly discussed readings in line with the group’s founding vision:

We pursue intersections between culture and computation, the qualitative and the quantitative, the humanistic and the digital through reading, talking, and coding

In addition to discussions, we occasionally had a sprinkling of interactive workshops, tutorials, and guest lecturers.

An Abridged Reading List

Race and Technology

Digital Rights

Big Data and AI

AI & AI Ethics

NLP

Tech Addiction

Tracking and Technology

Online Advertising

Data Science (Not discussed but good reading material!)

Miscellaneous

Bonus

This reading group has been over for a while now, but every now and again I see something that would have made the reading list if the group was still active. This section contains those pieces.

Lib/Lab Summer Edition

Since 2015 the Swarthmore College Libraries annually run a digital scholarship program entitled the “Lib/Lab Fellows.” Slightly adapted from their website, the Lib/Lab Fellows:

[Work on] collaborative projects that span disciplinary boundaries, that bring networked technologies to bear on conventional scholarship, [and] that demand a critical consideration of just what we mean by “the digital”?

Throughout the semester the Fellows are exposed to:

As I finished up the spring of my penultimate year at Swarthmore, I came to the realization that – like every other year – I wouldn’t have the time needed in my schedule to participate in the Lib/Lab Fellowship. This was a crushing realization because I was very keen on the projects and discussions that happen during a Lib/Lab Fellowship and, unlike previous years, I couldn’t promise myself that next year would be the year I finally make time in my overstuffed schedule to become a Lib/Lab Fellow.

I reached out to Roberto Vargas and Nabil Kashyap – the wonderful Librarians who run the program – who graciously provided me with all the relevant reading materials and agreed to let me run my own version of the program over the summer. (I mean, what else are you going to do during a global pandemic?) Consequentially, I gathered some interested people from the community and created the 2020 Lib/Lab Summer Edition!

If you’d like to see what sorts of texts we discussed, the syllabus can be found below. It can also double as a reading list.

Syllabus

Note: The syllabus listed below is built on the 2019 Lib/Lab Fellows Syllabus created by Nabil Kashyap and Roberto Vargas. Feel free to check out their syllabus.

Week 1: Back to basics

Week 2: Power, race, and technology

Week 3: “It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes.” - Sen. Stevens

Week 4: Does data dream of visualizations?

Week 5: Hey, Hey, Listen! (The Attention Economy)

Week 6: Is the cloud someone else’s computer?

Week 7: Performing Identity in Digital Environments

Week 8: Privacy and Surveillance