Michael Taussig: “Mooning Texas”

MIT Building 32 (Stata Center), Room 155 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA

An adventure story involving social energy + art + Emile Durkheim’s “take” on Mauss + Hubert’s “take” on mana + the creativity of gossip.

Nick Seaver: “What Do People Do All Day?”

MIT Building 56, Room 114 Access via 21 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA

Drawing on years of fieldwork with the developers of algorithmic music recommenders, Seaver describes how people make sense of new kinds of jobs.

Fox Harrell: “Reflections on Advanced Identity Representation”

MIT Building 56, Room 114 Access via 21 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA

Fox Harrell presents outcomes from his National Science Foundation-supported Advanced Identity Representation project, which helped reveal social biases in existing systems and implements systems to respond to those biases with greater nuance and expressive power.

Virtual Reality Meets Documentary: A Deeper Look

MIT Building 32 (Stata Center), Room 123 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA

A panel with some of the leading creators in virtual reality -- Raney Aronson-Rath, Jessica Brillhart, Nonny de la Peña, and Caspar Sonnen -- to better understand VR’s potentials and implications for documentary and journalism.

Knowledge’s Allure: Surveillance and Uncertainty

MIT Building 3, Room 133 33 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA

Sun-ha Hong on how "big" data and surveillance are not just about privacy and security but also redistribution of authority, credibility and responsibility.

Next Stage Planning for the Digital Humanities at MIT

MIT Building 3, Room 133 33 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA

Douglas O’Reagan will update the audience on his efforts and invite suggestions and ideas concerning the future of digital humanities at MIT.

How Did the Computer Learn to See?

MIT Building 3, Room 133 33 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA

Did computers learn to see by modernity's most highly evolved technologies of vision, or, as Alexander Galloway argues, from sculpture?

Black + Twitter: A Cultural Informatics Approach

MIT Building 3, Room 133 33 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA

André Brock, scholar of Black cyberculture, offers that Twitter's feature set and ubiquity map closely onto Black discursive identity.