Category Archives: Data Ethics

Smart Cities and the Importance of Public Trust

A critical review of the Waterfront Toronto Smart Cities Project UPDATE: On May 7, 2020 Sidewalk Labs pulled out of Waterfront Toronto https://medium.com/sidewalk-talk/why-were-no-longer-pursuing-the-quayside-project-and-what-s-next-for-sidewalk-labs-9a61de3fee3a There are places I’ll remember All my life, though some have changed Some forever, not for better Some have gone, and some remain             The Beatles, “In My Life” Over the last …

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Lilly Irani’s Entrepreneurial Citizenship in India

Lilly Irani conducted a multiple year critical study of design schools and entrepreneurship in India, participating as a designer and an ethnographer with one particular design studio for a number of years. Irani is both a researcher and an tech professional. In her book, Chasing Innovation, she coins the term “entrepreneurial citizen” to explain how …

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Shenzen, Shanzai and Maker Culture

Reading Wen Wen, and Gu and Shea and a preview of work by Lindtner about Shenzen, I was asked to reflect on what is Chinese maker culture and who or what forces are cultivating it and why. These works put forward a picture of Chinese maker culture as a hard-working ethos, that has arisen from …

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Code of Practice for Data Science?

Executive Summary This post discusses accountability, ethics and professionalism in data science (DS) practice, considering the demands and challenges practitioners face. Dramatic increases in the volume of data captured from people and things, and the ability to process it places Data Scientists in high demand. Business executives hold high hopes for the new and exciting …

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New Tech Data as Court Evidence?

Or why judges are as cautious as the Amish when it comes to admissable evidence “Sharing a Ride” by Forsaken Fotos is licensed under CC BY 2.0 This is my reaction to material we discussed in my CMGT530 class at Annenberg: Social Dynamics of Communication Technology. The material was Czitrom (Czitrom, 1982) and the film …

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Image Processing in The Age of Surveillance

TL:DR How three forces: the explosion of individual images available online, theaccelerating data science capabilities of image processing, and pressure on individual rights and freedoms impact the use of image recognition in surveillance in crime prevention and criminal prosecution. Covers the potential risks of reliance on this kind of visual evidence, and recommendations to reduce …

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Eradicating Racial Differences in Prostate Cancer Outcomes

A literature review of academic studies of racial disparities in prostate cancer outcomes, particularly for black Americans. In loving memory of Calvin L Harris Senior.

Professional Ethics in contemporary Data Science practice

Executive Summary This paper will discuss accountability, ethics and professionalism in data science (DS) practice, considering the demands and challenges practitioners face. Dramatic increases in the volume of data captured from people and things, and the ability to process it places Data Scientists in high demand. Business executives hold high hopes for the new and …

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Anthropomorphising the algorithm

Leading on from my last blog post conclusion that holding algorithms accountable is a bit of a daft idea, I want to thank Richard Nota for this wonderful comment on The Conversation article posted by Andrew Waites in our slack channel Richard Nota The ethics is about the people that oversee the design and programming …

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About algorithms being black boxes

For 36111 Philosophies of Data Science Practices’ first assignment, I am exploring the emerging practice of holding algorithms accountable. Often, people refer to algorithms as black boxes. There are three different definitions of a black box, according to merriam webster: Definition of black box 1 :a usually complicated electronic device whose internal mechanism is usually …

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