The last two chapters of Race after Technology introduced some new stories and keywords that I recognized from previous classes. In chapter 4: “Technological Benevolence”, the term ‘fixing’ was used throughout the chapter. I found the Racial Fixes subsection to be the most interesting. There was a story about Janet Vertesi, who had experimented trying to keep her pregnancy private from the internet. In this story, she avoided computer and phone searches about pregnancy/babies and purchased any baby related things with cash or gift cards. Her husband was flagged in illicit activity for purchasing too many gift cards. I found this extremely interesting because it is weird the lengths you must go these days to stay private from marketers and the internet. At the end of this subsection, it discusses if fixing racial problems/bias on the internet means either, “bland generalization or spicy stereotype,” and from studying this for awhile now, it seems ‘spicy stereotypes’ is not a crowd favorite. In chapter 15, the term code-switching was brought up. I find code-switching very intriguing because where I can understand there is a difference between the way you speak to your friends rather than your boss, it gets complicated when there is a term “proper English” for people who are not well spoken in English yet demonstrate excellent professionalism. And usually, those people are not white, and sometimes come from low-income households or communities where good education is not accessible, resulting in biasness. I found this article about code-switching from the perspective of a black person in the work force. I found this sentence quite powerful, “For African Americans, code-switching is a performative expression that has not only helped some of us thrive in mainstream culture, it has helped many of us simply survive”.

Chapters 2 and 3 of Race after Technology explored a lot of concrete examples of racial bias in technology. There were examples of how different races encounter problems with technology, each one of them having varying issues. It was explained how location makes a difference when it comes to facial recognition, and honestly it makes sense, “It turned out that algorithms ‘developed in China, Japan, and South Korea recognized East Asian faces far more readily than Caucasians. The reverse was true for algorithms developed in France, Germany, and the United States, which were significantly better at recognizing Caucasian facial characteristics” (76). I found the section “Exposing Difference” particularly interesting because I feel like it provides some reasoning to technology bias. It is said that bias comes from the fact that the engineer who programed a device/ product is of a certain race. While I believe racism is still a huge issue today and is something that everyone needs to be consciously aware of as well as the history, it makes sense for a lot of technology products are biased because of this reason. That being so, incorporating the awareness around biasness needs to be an extra step when programming. Somehow, I think that engineers need to add diversity to their checklist in many forms if they don’t already.

While doing this assignment, I sat next to my brother who is a recently graduated software engineer, and I had a few discussions about racism and bias while reading some of the stories provided in the reading. He has mentioned that he spent several weeks in one of his classes talking about unintended bias. So, I searched up a generic “How do engineers face bias” and I found this article https://www.wepan.org/page/UnintendedBias and it has a few overviews and videos about how engineers should approach and understand unintended bias.

Starting the new unit with some complicated objectives and dense reading in “Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code” by Ruha Benjamin, there are a lot of different stories and directions that the reading follows, but ultimately reviewing how race plays a part in technology. Lots of examples are given and referred to Facebook and big tech companies’ way of working (Move Fast and Break Things). While I felt like this book was a bit hard to keep up with, I did understand the discriminatory design within devices, recognition, technology and even soap dispensers that can be concluded into that these devices have bias. Bias within technology and algorithms leads to stereotyping. Stereotyping in the introduction and first chapter can be referred to bias for job applications and housing, which the author made an excellent comparison to the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive”. Why I liked this comparison so much is because I am a big fan of Black Mirror, and their thriller-like episodes are so chilling because of how close to reality the made-up devices play roles in society. While the concept of citizen scoring in the “Nosedive” episode is fictional, is it awfully close to the bias in technology. The bias comes back to the design process and who helps design and program: “As machines become more ‘intelligent,’ that is, as they learn to think more like humans, they are likely to become more racist. But this is not inevitable, so long as we begin to take seriously and address the matter of how racism structure the social and technical components of design” (39).

Lots of Black Mirror Episodes dance around the topic of race, but one called “Black Museum” faces race head-on and justice is given in the end. This article:  https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbp9my/black-mirror-is-obsessed-with-black-suffering, discusses whether the justice in this episode is significant enough.

The last few chapters of this book had a nice summary as to what the author was trying to show readers about the internet and how it deals with search engines when it comes to race and gender. The internet is not some random generator or is programed by itself, “This linkage between the indexing practices of the World Wide Web and the traditional classification systems of knowledge structures such as the Library of Congress is important. Both systems rely on human decisions, whether given over en masse to artificial intelligence and algorithms or left to human beings to catalog” (144). When the author performs and presents her research throughout the book, conclusions can be drawn that Google, that basically controls the internet, and the people who manage and work for Google are majority white and male, leaving little room for women and people of different colors and races. Thus, resulting in overly sexualized and racist search results and also data tracking for commercial purposes. I think that being aware of this and bringing others attention to it is a good start, but it does make me wonder about those who are sexist and racist still having power, what are they doing to help this? Are they doing anything? Are they pushing us back?

I was curious to see what Google employees ethnicity statistics were and I found this website, https://www.statista.com/statistics/311810/google-employee-ethnicity-us/ where over the years, over 50% of white people are employed for Google, where slowly that number is going down by 1%, around 40% are Asian, around 6% are Latinx, around 4% are Black, and less than 1% are Native American.

Also, this website,  https://www.statista.com/statistics/311800/google-employee-gender-global/ that covers gender. Over 65% is male, around 33% is female.

There were a lot of overwhelming ideas in these few chapters. The author shared many stories and examples of unfairness, racial and sexist injustices within the internet, and scary realities when it comes to privacy and personal data. Chapter 2, Searching for Black Girls reviewed why certain overly-sexualized results showed up for search words “black girls”, and the chapter showed that porn websites have lots of power over internet search engines. I learned in this chapter that not only were search results over-sexualized for “black girls” but for girls in general (Asian girls, Hispanic girls, Latina girls, American Indian girls, white girls). It shows that there is bias when it comes to who the internet is ran by (men), also giving more power to the porn industry. I learned that the number of African American people employed by Google is extremely low. Moving forward from that discovery, there are racial stereotypes when it comes to Google, and they denied responsibility, “What we need to ask is why and how we get these stereotypes in the first place and what the attendant consequences of racial and gender stereotyping do in terms of public harm for people who are the targets of such misrepresentation” (82). Chapter 3 and 4 made me very anxious. The author talked about data privacy and how Google in ways brushes over where and how people’s own personal data is stored or deleted. She tells stories of women losing their jobs or getting denied a job because they had been in the porn industry previously when at desperate times for money. What I found interesting is that she gave no examples of men, do men not need to worry about being over-sexualized and possibly losing jobs like women do, even though they are the ones promoting and using it?

I tried to find an article where a man lost a job for being in the porn industry but failed to find anything, I found this one instead. It is a story of a woman losing her job because she had done porn before she went to nursing school to make money, then got recognized and no one signed off on her hours.  

So far what I have taken away from this reading is that algorithms have major mistakes. Google is a giant platform that serves to billions of people, but companies/other platforms with higher income have advantages to optimize search engines, giving unfair opportunities to not as well-known platforms. I also learned that women have been extremely sexualized when it comes to simple google searches, which is very stereotypical in terms of society. Search engines for people of color are ultimately racist. This quote stood out to me: “Certainly, women and people of color could benefit tremendously from becoming programmers and building alternative search engines that are less disturbing and that reflect and prioritize a wider range of informational needs and perspectives” (26). I agree with this quote, however I find it surprising for things to change, women and people of color should be the ones to change it, is it impossible for people already working within these systems to be educated? Thankfully things are changing within the internet, especially since the author’s examples in 2011 and 2013, I looked up “black girls” on Google and was happy to see top results websites of: https://www.blackgirlscode.com/, https://therapyforblackgirls.com/, https://www.blackgirlssmile.org/, rather than porn or over sexualized pictures or articles. I am interested to see what “black girls” Google search would have been like before George Floyd last year, just because I felt like things finally started to change for the better and people became significantly more aware after the year 2020.

The last few chapters of Network Sovereignty: Building the Internet Across Indian Country by Marisa Elena Duarte were very insightful. I learned about the process of emerging Native and Indigenous people’s traditions to a modern and accessible broadband network while also still protecting and respecting Native practices from different perspectives of people and time throughout history. What I gathered as the main goal/topic of this book was sharing stories of trying to get a functional broadband network across Native lands, which are not accessible at the current time. This is a challenging task to complete because of money, land, Native practices, and most of all the fear from colonialism throughout history. A Native man spoke on the attempt to make technology more accessible on scared land: “A century ago they wanted us dead… fifty years ago they wanted us to be quiet and assimilate. Now they are asking us to help build a major national communication infrastructure across some the most remote lands within US borders. What new era is this?” (114). This quote shows me the fear perspective that Native and Indigenous people have, and it also shows how reasonably scared he is for him and his people. Coming across the famous painting, ‘Manifest Destiny’, this painting shows so much rich history of colonialism, mistreatment, and disrespect of Native people on their Native land, with also showing how technology like the railroads supported colonialism. It is still very apparent the fear is still there and will never be forgotten, but from reading immense research that the author has shared, the purpose of expanding technology and the internet across Native lands, is to have community, share knowledge with one another, and give Native people opportunities to grow and become great people that do great things.

Although this was a few years ago, I was curious about the idea of Manifest Destiny in the 21^st century, because there are still similar things such as disputed land rights, treaties, and unfair treatment today.

I thought this week’s dense chapters had a lot of different ideas than the previous ones. Chapters 3 and 4 explained in detail about broadband networks and how Native people have struggled to get any technology assistance or connection accessibility through the internet with the land they live on. There was a lot of process walk throughs of how it could be possible to get accessibility to these areas such as places in Idaho and Washington. Getting materials to allow technology to function correctly costs a lot of money, and wealth is not a common thing on Native lands and ranges from each different area. For people to make exceptions, there had to be communication with the government. One story through out these chapters that stood out to me was: “… one of the most well-publicized cases of tribal lack of Internet access began with a story about Myra Jodie, a teenager from the Navajo Nation who won a computer she could not use” (84). As I read this story, I imagined myself being that fourteen year old girl, feeling so proud of myself for winning a computer, not just receiving it or paying for it, winning it, but then having it be useless because of the place that I live. I thought it was very unfair and I am glad that this story has brought major attention to something greater and in demand of help.

For one of my previous DTC classes, we studied the internet and how a lot of people simply do not have access to Wi-Fi. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140214-the-last-places-without-internet I could not find the exact article we read but this one also sheds light on places in the world that don’t have internet access.

Tribal sovereignty is the rights that Natives must govern themselves, and a lot of ideas in these chapters have shared the tough process, stories and solutions that are going on, and how to continue to move forward with them. Internet access is only one of the many things, but it can help communities become more connected and involved to the world.

What I have gathered so far throughout this reading is an educational piece of writing through a narrative perspective of a Native and Indigenous person. Author Marisa Elena Duarte shares a passion for her heritage and those with similar histories of colonization. She mainly focuses on the question of: “What are the technologies that will allow us, as Indigenous peoples, to reclaim our lands and ways of being-spiritually, socially, spatially, ecologically, and politically?” (4-5). I very much enjoy learning further on a more personal and technological level about why and how Native and Indigenous artifacts are thoroughly protected. In the few chapters that I read, I understood the connection between the enlightenment era values of progress and scientific evolution and the Indian eradication, especially with Marisa’s examples of colonization in history and the similarities they have to the modern day. One example was when the railroad was created, and the military pushed tribal people out of their land. Yes, the telegraph was an innovative invention that served as a major steppingstone for further technology, but it was also used to send messages about Indian mobilization. She shared another example about a decade later from the telegraph, and the point that was trying to be made was: “The general rule was that for Americans to prosper, Indians had to die” (11). Marisa uses these examples such as telegraphs to get readers to understand technology, and to look at not just the technology itself, but how it is used and how it affects what is happening in environment surrounding it. While this writing focuses on Native and Indigenous people colonialism in the past and present with a focus in technology, other people and places are briefly mentioned as well, I found this article that talks about more modern day decolonization examples steps to be taken: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/opinion/sunday/decolonization-statues.html