Speaker: Dr. Mark Coté
Date and Time: Wednesday, May 30, 2018, 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Location: Ponderosa Commons Multipurpose Room (2012)
Title:
Examining Data Life
Abstract:
In this presentation I will tell a story about Data Life in a way that interweaves the development of my scholarship, through both my research and teaching. I will begin with datafication, the ubiquitous condition of data life. This is the pervasive capture of ourselves and our lived environment in discrete data points which are computationally processed into different forms of value. I will conceptually frame data life in exteriorisation. This is an enduring human condition, whereby thought and memory are exteriorised onto technical objects, from the most rudimentary stone tool to the autonomous agents of Artificial Intelligence. I will outline the techno-cultural method, a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach that breaks open the black boxes of data life. This is a critical and creative way to learn about the human reality in technical objects. I will show how this theory and pedagogy has been developed in and continues to play out across my myriad UK and European research projects. Finally, I will commence a dialogue on how I might collaborate with and learn from communities here to develop new ways of examining data life at UBC.