In their seminal book on classifications and infrastructures, Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences, Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star conclude: We have argued in this book that it is politically and ethically crucial to recognize the vital role of infrastructure in the “built moral environment.” Seemingly purely technical issues like how to name […]
In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer tells a number of stories that challenge the ways Western science constructs knowledge, and therefore understands nature. In one example, she discusses the ways trees help and communicate with each other through symbiotic mycelia. Because experts study individual trees, or via Darwinism, competition for survival/reproduction, it was impossible for […]
Data systems in non-profits are nearly always built to track, manage, and analyze individual clients/service users. In fact, this is a base assumption of such systems, and the vast majority of the literature on the topic supports this assumption. The problem with tracking service users.. well, there’s a lot. Here’s a few: We need not […]
This posts belongs to a series, Conceptualizing better data work in non-profits: First steps toward practice, in which I’m developing 5 prompts for orienting non-profit discussions about data work that can be organized toward justice. Each prompt is meant to provoke and ground ideas for organizational change that would include transformations in data work. The […]
This is the second in a blog post series, the introduction to which is: Conceptualizing better data work in non-profits: First steps toward practice. Reggio Emilia is an approach to democratic education that originated in preschools in Italy and is now used around the world in schools across age ranges. It’s worthy of some closer […]
In the last couple years, I’ve published 3 articles regarding the use of data in non-profit organizations. As I see it now, I’ve accomplished 2 out of 3 goals I had when I started this work many years ago as a dissertation project. Each of these stages has been a serious challenge for me. The […]
Apparently Luddism is making a comeback. Ted Chiang just wrote about it in The New Yorker (Will A.I. Become the New McKinsey), Angela Watercutter on the writer’s guild strike at Wired, and Cory Doctorow on sci-fi as a Luddite literature (and back in February). Of course, it’s been here and there discussed for years (What […]
Real power. The power to make decisions. For 15 years, I’ve described the work I do as youth community organizing, or youth participatory democracy. The idea at first was to get young people more involved in the public sphere, some ideal of more democratic governance and activist young people. Increasingly, it has become crystal clear […]
Whether self-help or helping profession, the act of improving the human and their well-being will become increasingly relegated to the efforts of algorithms. ChatGPT and its siblings are merely the latest and most visible actors in this game. The use of robots to provide physical help and company to the elderly, apps that surveil and […]
These are the notes from my presentation with Ben Anderson-Nathe entitled How the Rapidly Evolving Open Access and Open Data Movements will Transform Child & Youth Care Research in the 21st Century presented at the Child & Youth Care in the 21st Century, Victoria, CA in May 2014. The notes and slides for the presentation are […]