Rage Against the Machine: HADES Seminar: Reimagining the future by contemplating the past – Using science fiction to analyze digital technology

HADES Seminar Series: Humanities in the Digital Age

We recently completed the first a seminar series by the newly formed Humanities and Diverse eResearch Scholars group (HADES). This series brings together a wide range of interdisciplinary research at the intersection of Humanities and digital scholarship. We will hear from speakers on topics ranging from digital ethics and machine learning through to architecture and literary studies, but always with a focus on the crucial role that the Humanities play in helping to explain and shape complex human experiences. The series aims to challenge and extend understandings of digital research in the Humanities and present new and emerging work by scholars working across and between disciplines.

Inaugural Seminar for 2021 series

Our first speaker was Dr Kobi Leins, Senior Research Fellow in Digital Ethics at Centre for AI and Digital Ethics. Kobi presented on
“Rage Against the Machine: Reimagining the future by contemplating the past – Using science fiction to analyze digital technology”
(Thursday 22 April, 3:30-4:30pm, 2021):

Science fiction has long been one of the key areas in which futures are imagined, well before the technology is capable of what is imagined. This presentation will contemplate three fictional pieces, including Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818), RUR by Karel Čapek (1920), and Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1952), looking at themes and learnings for analyzing digital technologies. By using these tools, this brief presentation will evidence what the humanities have to contribute to the digital technologies, and the significance of engaging with tools that are changing democracies, the environment, and neoliberalism itself.

There was a lively online discussion amongst the roughly 50 attendees. Thanks Kobi!

Many participants volunteered resources for those interested in these topics:

• The Whale and the Reactor – Langdon Winner
• Atlas of an AI EVA initiative
• Netflix – Coded Bias
• A Mulching Proposal by Keyes, Durbin and Hutson
• Algorithms of Opression – Safiya Undia
• Noble Future Histories – Lizzie O Shea
• Weapons of Math Destruction – Cathy O’Neil
• Radical Technologies – Adam Greenfield
• Ben Green article 2020 – whose ethics is ethics

We invite you to comment and add to these resources and the discussion below.