Mittwoch, 29. Juni 2016, 15:00 - 16:00 iCal

CS-Colloquium: Prof. Hamid Ekbia

"To Automate or To Heteromate? A Revised History of Computing"

Fakultät für Informatik | HS3
Währinger Straße 29, 1090 Wien

Vortrag


Abstract

The history of computing can be written from different perspectives, all of them provocative and paradoxical at once. I propose a revisionary history of computing on the basis of the division of labor between humans and machines — from automation of early decades through the augmentation of personal computing to the more recent stage that I dub “heteromation.” The intensive computerization of the economy in recent years has reshaped that division of labor, systematically moving a large majority of people toward economically essential but marginal roles. In this arrangement, much of the work undertaken by humans is hidden, uncompensated or poorly compensated, and naturalized as part of what it means to be a “user” of digital technology. This trend gives rise to yet another paradox for the economy, for computing, and, ultimately, for all of us: to automate or to heteromate? I examine this paradox within the broader historical developments of the last century.

Bio

Hamid Ekbia is Professor of Informatics, Cognitive Science, and International Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he also directs the Center for Research on Mediated Interaction. He is interested in the political economy of computing and in how technologies mediate cultural, socio-economic, and geo-political relations of modern societies. His forthcoming book, Heteromation and Other Stories of Computing and Capitalism (MIT Press, 2016), examines new computer-mediated modes of value extraction in capitalist economies. His earlier book Artificial Dreams: The Quest for Non- Biological Intelligence(Cambridge University Press, 2008) was a critical-technical analysis of Artificial Intelligence. He is the co-editor of a volume titled Big Data Is Not a Monolith (MIT Press, 2016). Currently a Senior Fellow at IFK in Vienna, he is studying the political economy of drone warfare.

Zur Webseite der Veranstaltung


Veranstalter

Fakultät für Informatik


Kontakt

Werner Schröttner
Fakultät für Informatik
Dekanat
01/4277/78003
werner.schroettner@univie.ac.at