Archive for 2017

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[ecrea] Automated Knowledge and Autonomous Publishing Infrastructures – Workshop

Tue Oct 24 22:02:37 GMT 2017




*Automated Knowledge and Autonomous Publishing Infrastructures – Workshop*

Digital Life Research Program

Institute for Culture and Society in collaboration with Australia-China Institute for Arts and Culture, Western Sydney University

2-3 November 2017

https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/ics/events/automated_knowledge_and_autonomous_publishing_infrastructures

Venue: Parramatta City Campus, 1PSQ, Level 8, Room 12

Organizers: Liam Magee and Ned Rossiter

_Summary_

The prospect of cognition outsourced to machines is a worry for many. The automation of knowledge generation and AI-delivered modes of teaching particularly afflicts those working in the university. For many years academics have submitted to the political economy of publishing industries for the trade-offs on offer: esteem and prestige, job security, an outlet for intellectual expression, a basis for research grant applications, and perhaps some sense of community. The horizon of doom again raises questions of an existential kind, not least of which hangs off a sense of futurity without purpose.

Purposelessness finds specific form with the rising spectre of machinic, semi-automatic and theory-less knowledge. Examples of the algorithmically-sourced journal article appear in numerous forms, from the apparently benign reference lists curated through Google Scholar’s indexing to machine learning-based inferencing that stretches from method and findings to analysis and conclusions. Increasingly research can meaningfully ask itself what parts of its canonical knowledge format can the algorithm compute effectively? Is its automaticity itself a sign of the journal article’s obsolescence?

As one example, Kosinski and Wang, two social psychologists from Stanford, have applied machine learning, apparently with great success, to the identification of sexuality among photos extracted from dating websites.  Quite aside from the obvious dangers its conclusions imply, the paper itself can be described as an “augmented reality” –  one in which algorithms construct new links between the structure of faces and sexual preference, a new phantasm or simulation of the “real,” minimally “augmented” by contributions from human authors. It begs a return to Freudian and Derridean concepts of unconscious or automatic writing, with a terrifying new political spin. The algorithm identifies your sexuality, and partly writes up its own findings. For now, astute review can pick apart bias in its assumptions and interpretations. But the era of machinic knowledge production and review is also clearly underway.

The cold sword of autonomous knowledge production devoid of the all-too-human qualities of curiosity and doubt, elation and despair adheres to the proliferation of machinic imaginaries. When facial recognition technologies get airplay for their supposed capacity to identify sexuality and our intellectual capabilities, it would seem we have well and truly entered the augmented reality of control society. If reality is determined by the fallacy of machine intelligence, then what implications does this hold for knowledge generated out of the academy?

But might we also see this as an occasion to crystallize a politics of autonomy? For writers, designers, scholars and theorists, this two-day workshop explores how publishing infrastructures might reside at the core of knowledge production predicated on the logic of an autonomous commons. Indeed, how might we envisage something like an AI commons? What are the parameters through which wild theory, for instance, might be produced by the machine while we kick back with another glorious day at the beach? And, more seriously, how might an automated commons guard against data expropriation that increasingly defines extractivist economies of the tech sector and university alike? In pursuing the possibility of autonomous knowledge infrastructures, this workshop advances a politics of collaborative constitution.

*Program*

DAY 1

2 November

10.00–10.30am Welcome and Introduction

10.30–12.30pm Automating Knowledge and Invasive Apparatuses

12.30–1.30pm     Lunch

1.30–3.30pm       Open Knowledge Publishing

3.30–3.45pm       Tea/coffee

3.45–4.30pm       Summary panel

DAY 2

3 November

10.30–12.30pm Implementing New Knowledge Environments

12.30–1.30pm     Lunch

1.30–3.30pm       Knowledge Production and Autonomous Infrastructures (Fibreculture Publications)

3.30–3.45pm       Tea/coffee

3.45–4.30pm       Closing panel and discussion

No registration fee required.

RSVP by 30 October: https://tinyurl.com/y9pfr3bl

Panel Summaries:

_Automating Knowledge and Invasive Apparatuses_

Drawing on political traditions and practices of autonomy, this panel undertakes the work of translation to forge a connection with media of expression. We introduce the concept autonomous media as an analytical device and empirical condition that marks the arrival of computational systems able to exert a form of sovereign authority over the organization and management of society.

Speakers

Liam Magee, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

Ned Rossiter, Institute for Culture and Society/School of Humanities and Communication Arts, WSU

_Open Knowledge and Publishing_

This panel looks at the evolving role of publishing in opening up the access to and creation of knowledge in various contexts. Through the examinations of digital publishing, open access, and literature translation, the presentations interrogate the dynamics of publishing in removing the socio-economic and intercultural barriers against the growth and exchange of knowledge, as well as the political economy of the initiatives. The panel further discusses what we mean by “open knowledge” in the digital globalisation of publishing today.

Speakers

Xiang Ren, Australia-China Institute for Arts and Culture, Western Sydney University

Lucy Montgomery, Centre for Culture and Technology (CCAT), Curtin University

Ivor Indyk, Centre for Writing and Society, Western Sydney University

_Implementing New Knowledge Environments_

The Digital Humanities Research Group is a member of the “Implementing New Knowledge Environments” consortium: a collaborative group of researchers based mainly in Canada focussed on networked open social scholarship (http://inke.ca/). The activities of INKE include an “open scholarship policy observatory”. In this panel we discuss the implications of INKE for the digital humanities at large, and how Australia can contribute a unique perspective to Canadian and global discussions on new modes of scholarly knowledge production.

Speakers

Rachel Hendery, Digital Humanities Research Group, Western Sydney University

Jason Ensor, Library, WSU

Hart Cohen, School of Humanities and Communication Arts/Institute for Culture and Society, WSU

_Knowledge Production and Autonomous Infrastructures (Fibreculture Publishing)_

Open access, online publishing finds itself “occupying” the “publishing” of old. With this, it also challenges academic and more general research practice. It would be great to say that this resonates with the like of “Occupy Wall Street”. Yet OA and online publishing are also caught up in what is literally a struggle over capital, institutions, and sovereign territories. In this session, we will give short presentations on the practical role of abstractions; the new research environment in which students face “infinite knowledge”; and the politics of identity/identifiers in academic practice.

Speakers

Andrew Murphie, School of the Arts & Media, Centre for Modernism Studies in Australia, UNSW

Mat Wall-Smith, Director of Learning, Polygon Door <http://polygondoor.com.au/>, Wollongong

Glen Fuller, Faculty of Arts & Design, University of Canberra


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