Design educator, data rights advocate, and recovering entrepreneur David Carroll talks with Lee-Sean Huang about the challenges that digital platforms pose to privacy, democracy, and beyond. 

David Carroll is associate professor of media design and former Director of the MFA Design and Technology graduate program at the School of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons School of Design at The New School. He is known for legally challenging Cambridge Analytica and related companies in the UK courts to recapture his 2016 voter profile using European data protection law. Featured in The Great Hack (2019) on Netflix, his data quest has appeared in WIRED, The Guardian, Motherboard, The Boston Review, Slate, Mother Jones, and the international press more widely. Formerly CEO of a failed tech startup backed by Hearst and incubated at NYC Media Lab and NY Media Center by IFP, Glossy visually organized digtial archives using machine learning and social content recommendation engines. This experience deep in industry helped form the basis of his research, legal efforts, and public engagement on data rights. His earlier scholarship on mobile media funded by research grants included support from Pearson Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and Nokia Research Centers. He is active on Twitter @profcarroll

Professor Carroll is scheduled to speak at the AIGA Design Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, now rescheduled for November 12-14, 2020. https://designconference.aiga.org/ 

This interview is the final episode in this season of Design Future Now. We would love to hear your feedback and suggestions for future episodes. Email us at [email protected]. We will be back in a few weeks!