#david zhou

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David Zhou

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David Zhou’s Lunar New Year hotpot recipe for Broadsheet

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David Zhou  -  Mauritius Slow Lizard

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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.

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