We Be Imagining

We Be Imagining

By The American AssemblySociety & CultureTechnologyArts
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We Be Imagining episodes

  • Hidden Fibers: Mapping the intimacies and infrastructure between information capital and policing (with Brian Jefferson)
    Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois and author of Digitize and Punish: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age, Brian Jefferson joins the WBI show to discuss the history of digital computing and criminal justice, revealing how big tech, computer scientists, university researchers, and state actors have digitized carceral governance over the past forty years.
    How did the War on Terror provide the impetus and funding for the NYPD’s to set up a separate proprietary fiber optic cable network for their surveillance infrastructure in the backdrop of historically low crime rates? How are IT companies-that are the equivalent of industrial manufacturing companies in the late 18th century- actively driving urban policies and the physical infrastructure of 21st century smart cities?
    1 hr 4 min
  • Sipping on NYPD Tears: Public Oversight of Surveillance Technologies (with Rashida Richardson)
    Rashida Richardson, Director of Policy at the AI Now Institute joins the WBI show to discuss the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act she wrote while at NYCLU, the limitations of the law as a tool in addressing or mitigating the harm of automated decision making systems (ADSs) and the amount of time she has for institutions waking up from their 450 year slumber to the realities of racial capitalism.
    How can we distinguish the types of action big tech companies including Microsoft, Amazon and IBM are taking to respond to public demands for them to end contracts with law enforcement? 
    How can we distinguish the types of action big tech companies including Microsoft, Amazon and IBM are taking to respond to public demands to end contracts with law enforcement? She puts us on the spot asking, will the title of this podcast will get to most of America? Will we have a little more imagination on what makes an actually racially equitable and just society because the efforts of most of these institutions is still drawing on logic based on assimilation, “here let’s throw a few things at you and let’s go back to business as usual”?
    1 hr 3 min
  • Policing by Air(with Andrea Miller)
    Andrea Miller, soon to be a faculty member of Florida Atlantic University this fall, joins the WBI show to discuss her research interests including critical military and police studies, racialization, drone warfare and preemption, cybersecurity and algorithmic governance, ecosystem ecology, and the politics of extraction and infrastructure. 
    How do some digital technologies that are operationalized in the war on terror really emerge through circuits and histories of racialized policing? How can we understand drones as complex infrastructures and trace them back through the use of air power by military and local police departments? Is the police response to protests representative of a strategy and tactics or is the state being reactionary-responding in full force to threats to its consolidation of power?
    1 hr 1 min
  • A Black Waiting (with Katherine McKittrick)
    Katherine McKittrick, Professor of Gender Studies at Queens University and author of Demonic Grounds: Black Women and The Cartographies of Struggle, joins the WBI show to discuss her interdisciplinary research attending to the links between theories of liberation, Black studies, and cultural production. How do we nurture patience, sitting with ideas for a long time when the need to understand or react to what’s happening in the street feels so immediate and visceral? How do we sustain the struggle against white supremacy and deal with the unknowability of the moment?
    For complete show notes, visit americanassembly.org/wbi-podcast
    1 hr 2 min
  • Minisode 5 - Experimenting with Digital Storytelling (with Todd Anderson and Bryan Yee)
    Resident Artist at Culture Hub and host of Word Hack, the language +technology talk series at Babycastles, Todd Anderson joins the WBI show alongside virtual/augmented reality practitioner Bryan Yee to discuss the ways in which experimental digital storytelling can provide opportunities to intervene in the political moment where protesters are in the streets demanding justice for George Floyd. What if by using the Hitchhiker Chrome plug-in developed by Todd, participants vandalized the websites of government agencies that are killing us in the streets? Is hashtag activism a way to assuage White guilt without having to take any meaningful risk and how can we use these technologies to create public space for the resistance?
    For complete show notes, visit americanassembly.org/wbi-podcast.
    35 min
  • Tired of the Future, Time for the Now (with Josh Scannell)
    Assistant Professor of Digital Media Theory at New School’s School of Media Studies and author of This is Not a Minority Report: Predictive policing and population racism, Joshua Scannell joins the WBI show.
    How do calls for police transparency miss the ways predictive policing claims to have ownership of the future through surveilling the present? How does speculative fiction embody and intervene in our anxieties of American racial capitalism? Drawing on his essay in Ruha Benjamin’s collection, Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life, Josh invokes the words of Black studies scholars including Christina Sharpe in challenging us to see the world otherwise.
    0 min
  • Don't Google It (With Safiya Noble)
    UCLA Associate Professor, author of Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Noble joins the WBI show to discuss the mythologies of commercial search engines and digital redlining. How can we collectively reimagine an alternative public interest technology to off loading societal knowledge onto commercial platforms like Google? What are the challenges of content moderation in the textual realm of search on Google as compared to their video based content on YouTube?
    For complete show notes, visit americanassembly.org/wbi-podcast
    1 hr 1 min
  • Minisode 4 - Mother's Day In The Trenches: Abolishing the Child Welfare System

    4 women with direct personal experience being investigated by the New York City’s Administration of Children’s Services (ACS) join the WBI show to share how the agency works to systematically separate Black and Brown families. They also lift up the ways in which families are thriving now in the absence of the surveillance typically executed via the public school system.

    In response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, National Bailout is bailing out Black mamas and caregivers now through May, to ensure our people are alive, well and safe for Mother’s Day and beyond. We encourage you to give directly on their site in the spirit of Mother’s Day.

    For complete show notes, visit americanassembly.org/wbi-podcast.

    1 hr 16 min
  • Minisode 3 - Voices of Rikers Island

    Host: J. Khadijah Abdurahman
    Music: Drew Lewis

    Michael Nugent of It’s Up To Us To End Mass Incarceration joins the WBI show alongside people currently incarcerated in Rikers Island and their families. Rikers Island currently has almost 9 times the rate of community transmission of COVID-19 relative to the rest of New York City. Listen to the testimonies of those most profoundly impacted by the virus and unable to socially distance. #FreeThemAll

    You can follow It’s Up To Us on their Facebook page or contact them at [email protected]. To support their work, you can make a donation via Venmo @ItsUpToUsToEndMI.

    For complete show notes, visit americanassembly.org/wbi-podcast.

    36 min

About We Be Imagining

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The We Be Imagining Podcast examines the intersection of race, tech, surveillance, gender and disability in the COVID-19 era