One more week!

Excited for this!!! @livgar.bsky.social and I will be presenting highlights from our PA fieldwork!

Was great to work on this with @mwoluchem.bsky.social with helpful feedback from PA advocacy groups CCJ and PACET!

DAIR + Data & Society Present: Imagining Possible Futures, Portland Imagine alternative technofutures with the Distributed AI Research Institute and Data & Society in this free, in-person art-making workshop.

PNW folks, please consider joining us at PDX 350 for an in-person art-making workshop.

@dylnbkr.bsky.social and I will lead this event, designed to prompt us to imagine alternative technofutures and be in community at such difficult times.

Registration/Info: www.eventbrite.com/e/dair-data-...

three more weeks to submit abstracts to our 4S open panel, that articulate STS-flavoured responses to the most important question of our times: "how do we win?"

On March 10, 2020, I started a thread on another site about how what we already knew to be true about digital surveillance in the workplace at the time may accelerate and evolve as the pandemic hit.

Here's an attempt to recreate that thread for the archives.

PA Sen. McCormick’s wife works for who now? @mwoluchem.bsky.social and @livgar.bsky.social of @datasociety.bsky.social joined us for episode 74 of Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000. They discuss their recent piece “Pennsylvania Is Perfect” for @newintermag.bsky.social.

newint.org/science-and-...

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: The AI Con (with Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna). After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar. Prof. Emily M. Bender and Dr. Alex Hanna will discuss their new book, The AI Con.

Enormously looking forward to this event on April 21 at 6:30pm ET (online!) with the amazing @emilymbender.bsky.social
and @alexhanna.bsky.social talking about their new book, The AI Con.

Register here:

virginia.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

The Future of (Data) Work The rapid expansion and commercialization of artificial intelligence systems has been enabled by the upscaling of data work, defined by Miceli and Posada as “the labor involved in the collection, curati...

Are you near Princeton and want to talk about futures of (data) work? Come through next week! I'll be sharing about struggles over work and AI with our UCSD Labor Center.

anthropology.princeton.edu/events/futur...

I am so excited to announce I will be holding my PhD defense this Thursday at 10 AM CDT! I’ll be discussing my work on “recomputing” e-waste with some reflections on my PhD journey. If you’d like to attend online dm or email me for a link!

The Inattention Economy Revealing the unheralded contributions of women of color to the foundation and development of the digital economyThe Inattention Economy challenges the wides...

Here's the link to the free pdf of my new book The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet. Access is so important and I'm grateful that the press is platforming it as one file that is easy to download. www.upress.umn.edu/978081669906...

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: The Data Center Frontier. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar. This virtual roundtable brings together Indigenous land defenders, scholar-activists, and grassroots organizers to examine how the rapid expansion of AI and cloud infrastructure is driving new waves o...

On 4/15: “This virtual roundtable brings together Indigenous land defenders, scholar-activists, and grassroots organizers to examine how the rapid expansion of AI + cloud infrastructure is driving new waves of fossil fuel dependence, mineral extraction, land dispossession + environmental injustice”

I was not surprised to learn that I Georgetown, like most American colleges and universities, has succumbed to the pressure to appear part of the “AI” in-crowd (and to the temptation of the resources being made available to those in that crowd). But even though everything I have done in my professional life has been in some way based on the expectation that institutions will tend towards corruption, corrosion and capture, when I think about what this particular instance of that phenomenon signifies for you, the students of Georgetown, I feel very sad and angry. And I decided that the best thing to do with that sadness and anger would be to write to you all directly about why this decision by your university, which may seem on the surface to be an example of garden variety corporate thoughtlessness, should disturb you deeply, and provoke you to fight back.

Emily Tucker, the Executive Director of @georgetownprivacy.bsky.social, remains stellar and GOATed.
medium.com/center-on-pr...

A promotional image for the workshop. Imagining Possible Futures Portland Saturday, April 11, 2026 1pm-3pm 3639 N Mississippi Ave Portland, OR

New in-person workshop incoming, this time co-hosted with @datasociety.bsky.social in Portland, OR!

Saturday, April 11, 1pm-3pm at 350 PDX. For tickets and more info, head over to Eventbrite ⬇️

www.eventbrite.com/e/dair-data-...

poster for "the future of (data) work." top right corner contains event info: April 10, 9:30-4:30pm, Aaron Burr Hall 219." Under the title is the conference description: "The rapid expansion and commercialization of artificial intelligence systems has been enabled by the upscaling of data work, defined by Miceli and Posada as 'the labor involved in the collection, curation, classification, labeling, and verification of data.' Amidst debates about how 'intelligence machines' will impact the global workforce, this conference brings together a multidisciplinary group of scholars and organizers to examine the histories, topographies, and lived realities of data work around the world, centering the people behind the platforms that dominate our present to imagine alternative futures." Underneath this text is the list of panelists and their affiliations: Beth Semel, Organizer, (Assistant Professor, Dept of Anthro, Richard Stockton Picentennial Preceptor) Hunter Akridge Research Assistant (Grad Student, Dept of Anthro), Alex Hanna (DAIR), Seyi Olojo (UC Berkeley), Cindy Kaiying Lin (Georgia Institute of Tech), Julian Posada (Yale), Shivani Kapania (CMU), Samantha Dalal (Princeton CITP) Lilly Irani (UCSD), Sarah Fox (CMU). The background image, from Hanna Barakat/Archival Images of AI/AIxDesign, is a picture of hands yanking invisible strings through a rare earth mineral with a microchip superimposed over it set against. On the bottom of the poster are the sponsors (Princeton AI Lab, Princeton Dept of Anthro), and a QR code for the program).

interested in questions of tech, labor, and worker futures? on April 10 in Princeton i'm hosting an outstanding lineup of panelists at "the future of (data) work," where speakers will discuss the ethnographic, archival, and participatory action research they've conducted with data + tech workers

If you support LPL and want to help us, please spread the word! We are looking for some early-career person to join us for a summer of research. Full details >> short.lucyparsonslabs.com/lpl2026apps

Twitch Twitch is the world

🎧On the next Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000...🎧

@mwoluchem.bsky.social and @livgar.bsky.social of @datasociety.bsky.social join @emilymbender.bsky.social and @alexhanna.bsky.social to dig into the reality of data center construction.

Tune in live:
Monday, March 9, noon PT,
twitch.tv/dair_institute

Thank you for coming to the workshop! 😊

Thank you to @newint.bsky.social and @deccamuldowney.bsky.social for letting us write about Pennsylvania, its planned AI futures, and how people are pushing back. Read online and find in print! The entire March issue is about the humans behind the AI empire machine.

'Pennsylvania is perfect' Tech companies are building enormous data centres and reconfiguring energy infrastructure across the US, all to power the burgeoning AI industry. On a road trip, Maia Woluchem and Livia Garofalo trace...

In @newint.bsky.social, D&S's @mwoluchem.bsky.social and @livgar.bsky.social write about their work tracing the impacts of, and resistance to, the AI industry's development push in Pennsylvania — and introduce us to some of the people living in the thick of it. newint.org/science-and-...

Sooooo exciting and well deserved!! Congrats friend!

Against Surveillance & Spectacle: Building Global Resistance to Tech-Mediated Oppression — DISCO Network What does it mean to be in community? This panel brings together activists, scholars, and writers to explore connections between critical social issues—health justice, discrimination, technofascism, a...

Event: Against Surveillance & Spectacle: Building Global Resistance to Tech-Mediated Oppression

www.disconetwork.org/disco-events...

The tech worker movement and the rise of the tech oligarchy Published in Science as Culture (Ahead of Print, 2026)

New commentary by @cellllla.bsky.social, @perhaxis.bsky.social and myself: "The tech worker movement and the rise of the tech oligarchy". www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

CHI26 workshop “Crip HCI: Cyborg Perspectives on Disability Justice” invites self-identified fellow cyborgs to consider what the field of HCI might gain from a deeper engagement with cyborg perspectives on disability justice, “crip HCI”, and better AT. Submissions due Feb 12.
t1dsign.org/chi-2026

E106: CMU Coup? (w/ Sheila Liming & Catherine Evans) — re:verb On today’s show, Alex and Calvin sit down with the co-authors of a viral op-ed in The Chronicle of Higher Education regarding the controversial restructuring of the English Department at Carnegie Me...

🎆re:verb is back in 2026 with our first new episode of the year!🎉

This episode hits very close to home for Calvin & Alex:

E106: CMU Coup? (w/ @caevans.bsky.social & @seeshespeak.bsky.social)

www.reverbcast.com/podcasts/202...

THRILLED that Brian Chen's new policy brief, "The Big AI State: How the Trump Administration is Shaping US Industrial Policy toward 'Global Technological Dominance'" is live! Trump is not "deregulating"; his admin is intervening in the market BIG TIME to bolster AI. datasociety.net/library/the-...

Join us for BD&S 2026 Colloquium, Panel 1: Constructing Alternatives through Community Data & Data Activism
Jan 21 | 16:00–18:00 GMT (11:00 AM–1:00 PM EST)
uky.zoom.us/j/85254638887

#DataActivism #CriticalDataStudies #DataJustice

So fun writing this with you ☺️

A new piece I cowrote with my brilliant colleague @cellllla.bsky.social is out! 🙏🙏

The tech industry is seizing on Pittsburgh’s industrial history to sell its AI future. "The endurance of communities forced to survive the boom & bust cycles of other industrial times is now recast as ‘grit,’” write Ana Carolina de Assis Nunes & @cellllla.bsky.social. datasociety.net/points/data-...