Events

Via Zoom | RSVP Here | or email quello@msu.edu When ignoring service terms and agreement implications, people contribute to an internet meme known as "the biggest lie on the internet" (said to be "I agree to the terms and conditions"). This talk will review research unpacking the meme. This includes survey research addressing policy ignoring behaviors, analyses of the length/complexity of service terms, and clickwrap user interface designs. Findings suggest deceptive designs like the clickwrap, and long/complicated policies contribute to ignoring behaviours. Findings also suggest privacy protective behaviors are viewed as tangential to service use goals. This is problematic as online consent processes […]

Via Zoom | So many of the debates about public policy and the digital economy revolve around issues that are social-cybernetic in nature. That is, they deal with control and communication, but not “in the animal and the machine,” as Norbert Wiener’s foundational definition of cybernetics would have it, but control and communication in social systems. AI applications are accused of reinforcing societal biases by replicating patterns that reflect past discriminatory decisions. We want to know how much of our social life can be automated or turned over to robots, and whether this increases or decreases our sense of control […]

Join us in person, Communication Arts & Sciences Room 191 (South entrance) or via Zoom (sign up here). Event is Sponsored by the Rural Computing Research Consortium, Quello Center, American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program, and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering Rural places have experienced pernicious digital inequities for decades. Recent Pew Survey data finds that 28% of rural households in the US do not have broadband Internet access. For years, solutions to this digital divide have involved trillions of dollars invested into infrastructure that never quite bridges the gap. Instead of playing a perpetual game of technology […]