#AcademicRunPlaylist - 5/5/25

It was a crazy start to the week, but while shuttling around I listened to some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an excellent conversation with Nicolas Petit on the goals and global state of competition law at the Digital Markets Research Hub https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vf6m5QPrqA

Next was a great talk by Seda Gürses on how engineers think about privacy at the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmEFm_1Wqro

Next was an interesting talk by Konrad Kording on modeling attention at the Kempner Institute at Harvard University https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUBiAj7VB7E

Next was an intriguing talk by McKenna McCall on the need to combine formal methods and usable security approaches at the Carnegie Mellon University Software and Societal Systems Department https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbnqCbf8iNo

Next was "The Secret Life of Data" by Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert. This is a good overview of recent privacy harms, combining interviews with a broad media survey to give a sense of the biggest scandals that have emerged over the last decade. You can tell when the book was written - the "metaverse" and GANs feature prominently - but I actually found the lack of breathless coverage of generative AI refreshing as much of the concerns the authors bring up about slightly older systems still applies https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262377812/the-secret-life-of-data/

Last was "How Data Happened" by chris wiggins and Matthew Jones. Wiggins and Jones provide an amazing dive into the history of the concept of data, starting at the concept of alphabetization and ending in the present. Throughout they show how the notion of what is data, how one encodes phenomena, and how this data is analyzed and used is inherently bound up with social norms and politics in addition to the state of technology. I also love how this book goes beyond the headlines to surface different papers illustrating different aspects of data harms and ethical frameworks that have arisen both in and outside of technological disciplines. Highly recommend https://wwnorton.com/books/how-data-happened