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Title: Introduction: Seda Gürses Slug: 02-s2-introduction Date: 2020-11-01 12:01 Summary: Seda Gürses, computational infrastructures & POTs (Protective Optimization Technologies)
Seda Gürses is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Multi-Actor Systems at TU Delft at the Faculty of Technology Policy and Management, and an affiliate at the COSIC Group at the Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT), KU Leuven. Beyond her academic work, she also collaborated with artistic initiatives including Constant vzw, Bootlab, De-center, ESC in Brussels, Graz and Berlin.
Gürses's work provides us with handles to study computational infrastructures. Specifically in the paper she co-wrote on POTs (Protective Optimization Technologies)1, she proposes forms of critical optimization [what is critical optimisation?]. Here, she is questioning the notion of "fair" technologies, the limits of such practices and who is involved in reviewing their impact. An important factor in this paper is the proposal to approach computational infrastructures as systems, thus shifting focus from the algorithm itself to the economical, political and social context in which the algorithm operates.
By questioning how protective technologies [what are protective technologies, how does she define them?] could optimize their mode of operation in a truly fair way, it provides means for affected parties to address negative impacts of digital systems. The work departs from a thorough consideration of multiple forms of harm framed as externalities [what are externalities? maybe they need a separate sentence if we want to unpack this term] caused by computational infrastructures, such as privacy, discrimination, low wages, surveillance and exploration risks [what is exploration risks?]. How a POT could possible engage with these externalities is furthermore illustrated through a range of activist and artistic deployed examples of repurposed optimization technologies that correct [does she use the term correct?], shift of expose these harms.
Footnotes
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Bogdan Lulynych, Rebekah Overdorf, Carmela Troncoso, Seda Gürses "POTs: Protective Optimization Technologies" (2020). https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02711.pdf ↩︎