Drink Salon on Tech & Ethics

a monthly community gathering on tech and ethics + drinks #EMWDrinkSalon

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Recap: November Salon on Music with Alyce Currier, Lushen Wu, Owen Williams, and R*Q~L.

This recap is brought to you by DS community member Kathryn Wright

Subscribe to our newsletter, and we’ll keep you in the loop about our next salon: http://eepurl.com/beQwLH.

Welcome (or welcome back) to the Drink Salon blog! November marked the 8th Drink Salon on Technology and Ethics. If you missed this music-themed evening or want to relive it, look no further than these (digital) pages!

This post marks the launch of a new effort to document Drink Salon events. In conjunction with blog content, the Drink Salon team is also on Twitter (@EMWDrinkSalon, #EMWDrinkSalon). If you have ideas for discussion topics or speakers, if you want to tweet a quote from an event, or just want to chat, please get at us!

Since this month’s focus is music, in addition to highlights from the event, links are included to a few tunes connected to content from each speaker. Hopefully, it is new music to your ears.

Recap of the EMW Drink Salon on Tech and Ethics: Music

The co-directors of Drink Salon, Stine An and Theresa Kim opened up the evening by calling on the audience to re-focus on the connection between ethics and technology. Within modern society, our culture is increasingly captivated by the market opportunities technology enables while pushing the social implications of these tools to the background. In recent years, the tech sector’s major talking points have been digital transformation, enabling hyper-productivity, and disruption, but EMW Drink Salon hopes to encourage its audiences to question for what purpose and for whom do these efforts translate into progress, and how to make technology more accessible for everyone.

Alyce Currier (a.k.a. DJ Lychee), the evening’s curator, compared her experiences working in the tech sector and within techno music scene. In both cases, despite years of experience, she found the spaces exclusive, particularly for women. Through her observation, both communities have developed insular cultures, which are not designed to help women or other underrepresented groups thrive. As Alyce continued to work in music and tech from high school through the present, she found there were limited women role models to reference. Line-ups for techno festivals were absent of female DJs and a Google Search for the most successful tech entrepreneurs still looks like a line-up from the old boys club.

However, this is changing. Femme-centric DJ groups, such as Discwoman out of New York, have pioneered events that are more inclusive spaces for women, and in turn, foster a culture of inclusivity that can promote positive change for techno as a whole. Learn more about their work in this NPR article featuring the group last week.

Building on her experience observing the increased accessibility of techno, Alyce curated the evening to focus on technologies which work to make music more accessible to diverse groups.

Musical sidebar: When she's not curating salons, Alyce is DJ Lychee. Check out her latest track! https://www.mixcloud.com/notalyce/ultramodern-8ghm/

The first speaker of the evening was Owen Williams, a member of the software development team behind Mixxx since 2009. Mixxx is an open source DJ software. The software offers advanced music mixing features to a global user base, free of charge. The software is downloaded over a million times each year, and is supported by a volunteer community. Users range from party goers in India to a tango teacher who leverages Mixxx for his dance class.        

Mixxx’s goal is to enable more people to throw parties regardless of technical or financial limitations. The software supports of variety of operating systems and has minimal computing requirements. It also offers a less morally ambiguous option of cracked software for those with limited financial resources to dedicate to DJ software. Go on, and try it out yourself—we know you want to.

Musical Side bar: When Owen isn't programming for Mixxx, he's using the software to create music. Hear one of Owen's latest mixes here: https://www.mixcloud.com/birdmasterkevin/birdmaster-kevin-rwdfm-broadcast-11172015-owen-williams-guest-mix/

The night’s final speaker was Lushen Wu, founder of Bebop. Bebop uses music visualizations to make complex musical compositions more accessible and enjoyable. Bebop’s aim is to rekindle an appreciation of classical music that responsive to modern life. Its web interface uses midi files and a complex algorithm to visualize musical elements, such as timbre, duration and pitch in a digestible format. Bebop is working to utilize these visualizations in lessons plans for students to help understand the basics of composition, learn how to read music, and potentially empower students to compose themselves. The Bebop team also hopes to release a paid visualization application for a wider audience.

Bebop is best understood if you try it out yourself! This description does not do it justice, and is akin to trying to paint a picture with words (poorly). Sample visualizations are available at bebop.com/explore. The company is in the midst of a rebrand—so look for more exciting news for the team soon .

Musical side bar: The 2nd movement from the Bach Double is a nice slow jam - it is even nicer in Bebop: http://bebop.com/c/zP5YJ8rIE/ZxN8kvZTmUqbK-bach-concerto-for-two-violins-bwv-1043-ii-largo

The night then closed with an open discussion, and of course—drinks! If this recap leaves you wanting more, you can check out more about the evening’s speakers here. 

Please come out for our next Salons focused on librarians in January (https://emwdrinksalon-libraries.splashthat.com/) and death and mortality in February. It’s going to be a rad winter y’all!

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Recap: March Salon on Public Art w/ Xiao Xiao, Gershon Dublon & Kawandeep Virdee

March’s EMW Drink Salon looked at the theme of public art mediated by technology. With FOGO being the new FOMO (arguably and possibly not at all), the emphasis of people engaging IRL together had a particular significance. As the line between the real and virtual blurs together in our everyday life, public art has the unique ability to locate people together in space to share a collective experience.

To explore this further, makers and thinkers of public art Xiao Xiao, Gershon Dublon, and Kawandeep Virdee graced the EMW Bookstore stage to look specifically at how public art can be used to raise awareness on the effects of urbanization, expand and reshape our sensory experiences, and cultivate collective joy. ICYMI, here’s a recap of the three presentations:

“囧  (J I O N G)” with Xiao Xiao

囧 was originally an archaic character that means "patterned window" or "brightness," but is now used in contemporary Chinese internet as an emoticon to express a range of emotions such as exasperation, embarrassment, and awkwardness. Xiao embedded the 囧 in the design of a traditional patterned window (a visual pun) and took it with her around Beijing for a week in 2013. By creating a physical object from the 囧 emoticon, she was able to bring an artifact created in the virtual world to the public realm.

Xiao described how 囧 became symbolic of the feelings evoked by the rampant economic growth starting in the late 90s and the subsequent growing pains. Xiao framed 囧 as a way to deal with the disorientation and the disconnect from seeing a city change so quickly in front of your own very eyes.

Xiao also expanded on the theme and its interactivity by creating 囧 stickers made in the tradition of cut-paper decorations (窗花) and putting them up in the city. Passersby were able to interact with the 囧 by filling in speech bubbles to connect with the larger underlying meaning of 囧 in public.

“Being There: Matter is Movement” with Gershon Dublon

Gershon used the human sensory homunculus as a starting point through which we explored how we can shape our perceptions with technology as a mediator. Drawing on physicist Richard Feynman’s enthralling explanation of atoms jiggling as they transfer heat and energy, Gershon demonstrated for us how matter is movement, and how this principle has informed his approach to public art.

His project examples included ListenTree, a public art installation where trees were technologically enhanced. When passersby hugged and pressed their ears against the trees, they could hear and feel stories and songs transmitted through bone conduction. Gershon also presented a technological enhancement to create a responsive environment in the woods. This enhancement allows one to amplify sounds in nature, bringing forth sounds that are occurring near and far, above water and underwater so that one can manipulate the capacity to experience the world around us. Through it all, we’re all just jiggling atoms interacting with each other and our surroundings.

“Growing Public Space with Interactive Art” with Kawandeep Virdee 

To round out our evening, Kawandeep described his many large-scale interactive installations, which are designed with the primary motive to bring people together in a joyful way. Whether allowing people to paint colorful pixels on a shared projector screen, or allowing them to project their faces onto a building sized mask, his work allows people to bring together their different narratives by creating spaces that are playful and welcoming. The night ended with Kawan leading a discussion on how to transform 200,000 square feet of open public space in Boston’s City Hall Plaza into one that brings the community together. More information about the City Hall Plaza public art initiative can be found here.

— post by Drink Salon co-directors Theresa Kim and Stine An

Shout outs to our Drink Salon staff and community volunteers for the evening—thank you:

<3: You!

Noms and beverages: Ellie Tiglao, David Zhou & Julianne Papetsas

Door: Amanda Zhang, Rob Foley & Ludjy Derisier

Tunes: Keizo Amakawa

MC: Theresa Kim

Event Planning: Stine An, Theresa Kim & Ellie Tiglao

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And our featured drink:

Rainbow Russian: a coconut milk-based white russian with an array of DIY colorful simple syrups and toppings

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Recap: February Salon on <3 & Relationships

February’s Drink Salon was an ode to the <3 and relationships which nowadays appear to be in flux at the speed of the next trending dating app (Poke? Glimpse? Coffee Meets Cronut? Background Check?).

The evening flew by with transgressive insights and crackling wit from Nora Khan, Jackie Wang, and Gregor Spamsa.

“Love (and Dating) in the Time of OKC” with Gregor Spamsa

We sparked the night with Gregor Spamsa’s fourth wall breaking slideshow narrated with a lackadaisical and playful demeanor. Drawing on personal experiences with the mild west of OkCupid and contemporary readings on love, relationships, and connecting with other people, Spamsa unearthed a few central axioms to dating and pursuing love nowadays from a fresh perspective that included romps through our limbic system, optimal stopping in dating, upgrading relationship narratives, the tension between desire and familiarity, the vagus nerve, and “micro moments of positivity resonance.” She ended her talk with an insight into how love can be made accessible by framing it in a light that stresses the deliberate, transient nature of creating meaningful connections with other people. Gregor’s talk provided a positive lilt to a night laden with pointed questions at the nature of love, our relationships in the digital era, and our internal narratives of our relationships with ourselves and our bodies.

[Image of Erika La Tour Eiffel with the Eiffel Tower]

“If You Want to Marry an Onyx Cube but It’s Not Legal in Your State (Yet)” with Nora Khan

Khan delved into whether love can be one-sided and directed toward inanimate objects. Her talk started with a personal anecdote referring to the object referenced in the title but extended to examples of people forming an intense emotional attachment with an assortment of objects including large scale monuments such as the Berlin Wall and the Eiffel Tower as well as more quotidian things such as elevators, stairs, grandfather clocks, and cars. Khan’s presentation offered a wistful exploration of the objective/ objectifying nature of romantic relationships and adoration. How do you love something or somebody that/ who can’t love you back? Is unrequited love enough?

“Body Soliloquies” by Jackie Wang — film screening with introduction

To end the evening, Jackie Wang brought us to the corporeal realm with a discussion on the relationships we have with our bodies in the digital world. After a brief introduction, Wang screened for salon guests her film “Body Soliloquies” (view the film and artist statement here). Diving into the wealth of footage generated by and of the global village, she explored how people relate with, dissociate from, dissect, dissipate, and ultimately share the aged worn notion of inhabiting our bodies. Particularly jarring was footage in which a girl films herself pulling out her own teeth or other examples of individuals deliberately altering their bodies and sharing the experience of ailments (e.g. passing kidney stones) with a grotesque hypnotism. The montage of video interspliced with sound bites of people’s narratives was screened onto Wang’s own body in the film to form a collected trance about our bodies in a digital echo chamber.

— post by Drink Salon co-directors Theresa Kim and Stine An

Shout outs to our Drink Salon staff and community volunteers for the evening—thank you:

<3: You!

Noms and drinks: Ellie Tiglao, David Zhou & Amanda Zhang

Door: Amanda Zhang & Peter Papadimitriou

Tunes: Rich Lopez (DJ Animus)

MC: Theresa Kim

Event Planning: Stine An, Theresa Kim & Ellie Tiglao

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And our featured drinks:

Rosés Are Red-ish (winter sangria with rosé, strawberries, raspberries, and apples)

Violets Are Blue-ish (blue Hawaiian punch, lemon-lime soda, white cranberry juice, and berries mocktail)

Hot hot chocolate & hot chocolate station with garnish-ish (mint, special hot chocolate blend, chocolate syrup, whipped cream from a can, marshmallows, cinnamon, and peppermint schnapps)

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[loneberry]

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Jackie Wang is a writer, poet, musician, and academic whose writing has been published by Lies Journal, Semiotext(e), HTML Giant, BOMBlog, along with numerous zines. Her essay “Against Innocence” provides insightful analysis on penal and race theory. Her blog, Ballerinas Dance with Machine Guns, reads like a journal that explores writing as process. She’s currently writing a book for Semiotext(e).

Check out this interview from Mask Magazine with Jackie Wang, one of our presenters at the FEBRUARY Drink Salon on the theme of Love & Relationships.

We're running out of space, so save a spot for you and a friend here: http://emwdrinksalon-love-relate.splashthat.com/.

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More Community Links on PROGRESS and Diversity from Awesome People Neha Narula & Jean Yang

For our salon in January, we asked our featured guests to submit any links they felt to be helpful to their own thinking and way of being in the world. Jean & Neha led a conversation at the January Drink Salon on Tech & Ethics on diversity issues in STEM.

Here are some links they sent us to share with the Drink Salon community!

Recommended Articles:

Scott Aaron’s comment #171

Silent Technical Privilege in Slate, January 2014

Why women leave the tech industry in LA Times, December 2014

What Silicon Valley Thinks of Women in Newsweek, February 2015

Teams with more women do better in Harvard Business Review, June 2011

Fields where people are thought to require “brilliance” have fewer women in Science, January 2015

On women and performance reviews from FastCompany, August 2014

Group Projects and the Secretary Effect in The Atlantic, January 2015

Writing by Neha & Jean:

Neha, Jean, and Elena on "Why Gender Still Matters" in Wired, December 2012

Jean’s response to Scott Aaronson’s Comment #171 on Quora

"Unintended Consequences," Neha's blog post on female participation in online forums

"C is Manly, Python is for “n00bs”: How False Stereotypes Turn Into Technical “Truths”," Jean’s essay with colleague Ari Rabkin on how social bias masquerades as technical bias when it comes to programming languages in Model View Culture, January 2015

Jean’s Technical Privilege Reading List

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Community Links Round Up for PROGRESS

After our first Drink Salon at EMW in November, many community members told the Drink Salon team they would enjoy a curated collection of links, readings, media, and more to go along with each salon.  Our February theme is L<3VE & Relationships, so if you have any fav reads or whatevs, send them to our team at [email protected] with a brief intro or a couple sentences on why you dug it so much.

A couple articles the Drink Salon team really enjoyed thinking about this month while prepping for the February salon:

"Searching for Sex" by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz in The New York Times

"What Mathematics Reveals About the Secret of Lasting Relationships and the Myth of Compromise" by Maria Popova on Brain Pickings on Hannah Fry's book The Mathematics of Love

And here are the much awaited links on PROGRESS sent in by community members Amanda Zhang, Sara M. Watson, and more!

From Sara M. Watson:

“Women and Children First: Technology And Moral Panic” by Ben Rooney in The Wall Street Journal, July 2011

“The Disruption Machine” by Jill Lepore in The New Yorker, June 2014

“Back to the Future, Time Travel, and the Secret History of the 1980s” by Tim Carmody in Medium, January 2015

From Amanda Zhang:

“Why I’m Not a Maker” by Debbie Chachra in The Atlantic, January 2015

From a community member who preferred to remain anonymous:

“Shop Class as Soulcraft” by Matthew Crawford in The New Atlantis, Summer 2006

I read a book by the same author as this piece (the piece is a short version of the book Shop Class as Soulcraft), and even though I wouldn't have described it as about "progress" at the time, I keep bringing it and its conceptual framework up in conversations about "progress" and technology. 

The basic takeaway for me is that there are elements to human experience that much of mass marketed consumer technology (smart phones are the flagship example) is actively diminishing with each generation of "technological consumer progress." These include challenge, journey, mystery, a host of cognitive abilities, and also work with our hands and other senses besides reading a page or image.

Note: I definitely think these conversations about progress, technology, and "white vs blue collar" work that the author talks about are multifaceted and complex. I don't think Crawford has all the answers or that his work aptly captures all of the social justice and political implications of his arguments. But I think it's been a valuable building block added to my knowledge base on the issues.

From C. An:

"Data is the New “___” "by Sara M. Watson in DIS Magazine, February 2015

“The Inner Life of Rebellion” with Parker Palmer, Courtney Martin & Krista Tippett on On Being, January 2015

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"Precious Body" Project with Pampi Thirdeyefell

The Drink Salon team thought it'd be cool to feature some of our community members who were looking for collaborators and/or feedback for their projects. Our first feature is transmedia artist and poet Pampi Thirdeyefell. Learn more about her "Precious Body" wearables project and connect with her if you're interested in the project! Pampi is seeking 3D designers, engineers specializing in smart fabric technology, fabricators, and researchers. 

Description of project:

Manufacturing an innovative no-stitch smart line of athletic (yoga) wear with New England’s all-weather street-to-woods athletes in mind

Inspiration and proto-prototype:

2014 “Precious Body” Wearable Arts Spring Collection // reclaiming the warrior body into the temple body

Contemplative and compassionate as a monk; bright and brave as a warrior; Beauty glows from rooted poise and confidence. Rediscovered: the draped body, pinned, tucked with origami precision; the primal strike of the animal encoded in the warrior form; the change of seasons in color and texture.

Walk the wild restraint of the temple warrior. And love like one. Firm, sure-footed in your heart.

Collaborators sought:

Channeling the temple warrior, we ask, what would she stand for?

A way to roll out this wearable line that involves a slow manufacturing fair trade eco-friendly sustainable design model

3d designer to make digital patterns and 3D mockups of final prototype

Fabricator to experiment with manufacturing with new materials, using 3D printing technology and producing the first prototypes

People interested in researching slow manufacturing fair trade models and locating manufacturers who would be interested

Engineer specializing in smart fabric technology to help research and design functional elements

Contact information: Pampi transmedia performance art + poet [email protected] Subject: “Precious body” @ EMW Drink Salon

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PROGRESS

The Idea of Progress arose during the Enlightenment and foresaw a future where technological advances led to an improvement in the social condition. In the current era, the notion that advanced technology can lead our species to a better place is less certain and in flux. With society, the global economy, and human relationships much more complex, this simple linear path of progress is no longer as obvious or guaranteed.

Despite all of this, technological advances have been accelerating and affecting our social dynamics in unpredictable ways. The ever expanding entity that is the internet has led to increasing interconnectivity within the species, but has also brought to light the vast injustices that permeate our society and our collective psyche.

Given this precarious moment in time, EMW Drink Salon did the obvious—we ventured into the murky waters to explore this current, fluid notion of progress. 

Once the attendees got buzzed and satiated, we invited our speakers to provide a few different angles on where we are now and where we could be headed. Our Presenters for the Evening

In her presentation "Native Advertising and the Future of Publishing," Bethany Kwoka discussed the ethics surrounding native advertising and content including the proliferation of fluffy content in SEO pursuits and the issue of transparency of intent toward readers. As someone who has ghostwritten for “thought leaders,” she explored the quandary of lesser known writers making a living in the current landscape. Specifically she looked at the symbiotic relationship of faceless writers generating content to further elevate the profiles of well known figures. She also illuminated for us how difficult it is now for the average reader to distinguish between content and advertising in native advertising where content is often generated to sell a product or services. As she noted, "This content exists because someone, somewhere, is trying to sell you something."

still from presentation by Bethany Kwoka

David Zhou talked about his work exposing microaggressions through the Microagressions Project, and how it allowed for social innovations through community placemaking. Microaggressions, as discriminations caused mostly in the realm of the unconscious, were particularly well suited for being exposed online. He connected this with the notion of community placemaking where people can congregate online around social issues, raise awareness, and create social change.

In her piece "Studies in Motion and Time," Elizabeth Watkins explored visually the notion of progress in the past where people believed mechanizing behavior would lead to ever increasing productivity and prosperity . She subverted this paradigm by turning a linear idea of progress on its head. By manipulating video moving from across the Cartesian plane to one that is circular and even absurd, she created a visual remix of progress in the current era. 

still from "Studies in Motion and Time" by Elizabeth Watkins

Finally,

Neha Nerula and Jean Yang directed the conversation to diversity in STEM with a focus on gender issues within computer science. Aside from the obvious that gender issues exist, their conversation drew on specific anecdotes from personal experiences to illustrate just how entrenched how these issues are in a male dominated field. They discussed how communities can create inclusive conversations around diversity and also use evidence to make a common ground for moving the conversation forward. By sparking a dialogue, the speakers highlighted a social issue hindering the architecture and development of the spaces and communities that create and steward our technologies. 

Wherever progress is headed, here’s to a creating a community that is less mechanized, infused with social awareness, draws from a diversity of perspectives, and gives original creators their due.

--- A shout out to our Drink Salon staff and community volunteers for the evening—thank you!:

Good vibes: You! Noms and drinks: Ellie Tiglao, David Zhou & Kit Cali Door: Sharon Tai, Joshua Spitzberg, Rob Foley & Amanda Zhang MC: Theresa Kim Event Planning: Stine An & Ellie Tiglao

--- And our featured drinks: Tomorrow's Eve (dry sparkling wine, elderflower liqueur, freshly squeezed lemon juice, pear vodka, and lemon slice) The Overmorrow (sparkling cider and fruit juice mocktail)

--- post by Drink Salon co-directors Theresa Kim and Stine An

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EMW Drink Salon: Progress - Splash

EMW Drink Salon kicks off the new year, and you're invited to an evening filled with some drinking and some thinking! Featured speakers Jean Yang, Neha Narula, David Zhou, Elizabeth Watkins, and Bethany Kwoka will present on topics addressing this month's theme of PROGRESS.

Featured Speaker & Artist Bios

Bethany Kwoka is an editor at YEC (a membership organization for young entrepreneurs). Formerly a copywriter, publicist, and podcast creator for a PR firm, she now works mostly in online publishing. She has ghostwritten for major media outlets such as TIME, and her work routinely turns up in Forbes, Inc, Mashable, Read-Write, etc. Despite this, she has virtually no social media presence. Her talk will explore the ethics surrounding native advertising/ content marketing as they relate to progress in publishing.

Neha Narula is a PhD student in PDOS, the Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems group at MIT. Neha's research focuses on distributed systems, particularly having to do with consistency and performance. Previously, she worked for Google as a Software Engineer on Native Client, Blobstore, a system for efficiently storing and serving terabytes of large binary objects, and Froogle. At MIT, she runs a distributed systems reading group at MIT. She is graduating soon and looking for opportunities in industry and academia. 

Jean Yang is a PhD student in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Jean's research focuses on designing programming languages and tools that help people more easily write the programs they intend to write. During her PhD she created Jeeves, a programming language for automatically enforcing policies for security and privacy. Jean co-founded Graduate Women at MIT in 2009 and writes frequently about gender issues in tech.

Elizabeth Watkins has a particular love for moving images, online spaces, and temporality. She's lectured, collaborated, and exhibited at the California Institute for the Arts, the NY School of Visual Arts, the Carnegie Museum, Northeastern University, the Harvard Film and Environmental Studies Department, and the MIT Media Lab. She likes talking to people about ideas of all sorts.

David Zhou is a computational neuroscience researcher at MGH. He is not going to talk about computational neuroscience. He is going to talk about social innovation and models for community placemaking in internet activism. He is a co-creator of The Microaggressions Project, an online visual arts project that collects personal, reader-submitted stories of marginality in everyday life. The project has appeared in the New York Times, Buzzfeed, Feministing, Bitch Magazine, and other media.