This week I will be the tour guide for Brenna Clark Gray’s “Digital Detox #6: Build Back Better.” I will be focusing on Gray’s mention of the lack of care at the institutional level. With the current ongoing pandemic, it should come as no surprise that students have encountered difficulties with schooling. Through the quick shift from face-to-face instruction to virtual learning, students are exhausted but let’s not only think of them. Educators are the ones presenting these new technological […]

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Ruha Benjamin’s “Catching Our Breath: Critical Race STS and the Carceral Imagination” continues last week’s conversation regarding the biases and discrimination one faces due to technology. The question “Why didn’t sociologists foresee the explosion of collective action of Negro Americans toward immediate and full integration in American society” struck me. When reading classmate’s blogs, it was mentioned that Benjamin “makes a strong point against sociologists who did not pay enough attention towards fights for racial equality. If sociologists want to […]

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Joy Buolamwini’s TED Talk “How I am fighting algorithms with bias” discusses the biases and discriminatory encounters that individuals of color face when using technology. It is disheartening that we are in 2021, and we have yet to find recognition software that can detect diverse faces. Buloamwini provided her experiences with completing assignments during her undergraduate year but not being able to as her robot could not see her. She had to borrow her roommate’s face. With the current pandemic […]

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In this week’s blog post, I will focus more on Shoshana Zuboff’s “Surveillance capitalism’ and how companies are always watching us.” One may think that there is not much more to discuss in regards to artificial intelligence, automated diaries, algorithms, etc., but I found that Zuboff touched on a crucial point that has yet to be discussed. Often, we are so focused on companies and websites taking private information from individuals online. Still, from the reading, I found it interesting […]

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While beginning virtual learning, I always thought to myself, “Why does this feel much harder than if classes were in person?” To this day, I am still wondering why. When reading “The Zoom Gaze” and “Why We’re Exhausted by Zoom,” it was clear that others hold the same sentiments as me. The first half of Autumn Caines tied closely with my experiences on Zoom. I can recall the first week of online instruction being terrible. For every class, I was […]

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While reading “Intentionally Equitable Hospitality in Hybrid Video Dialogue: The context of virtually connecting” I found that this is an article that educators should read. As we have now reached a full year of virtual instruction, one may believe that they are aware of the difficulties that hybrid instruction brings, but it is clear that some are aware yet tend to dismiss the difficulties. As we begin to reopen, the article discusses the challenges in hybrid settings and the push […]

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