Algorithms: Follow the Purple Light

Explicit content warning

10/04/23 • 33 min

Moral Repair: A Black Exploration of Tech

What do we do about recommendation algorithms? What ethical standards could we use to reshape technology?

Hosts Annanda and Keisha talk to Stewart Noyce, a technologist who helped develop the internet, and Rev. Dr. Sakena Young-Scaggs, an Afrofuturist scholar and philosopher, to understand how we can all navigate recommendation algorithms in a life-giving way.

SHOW NOTES

Learn more about Stewart’s work in marketing and consulting at StewartNoyce.com
See IBM promoting their work at the 1994 Winter Olympics in this vintage ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNZ7k9Kgmek
How do algorithms drive social inequality? Virginia Eubanks explains in Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police and Punish the Poor (St. Martin's Press)
What’s Afrofuturism all about? Read Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture by Ytasha L. Womack (Lawrence Hill Books)
Learn about Black entrepreneurs receiving 1% of all venture capital: Sources of Capital for Black Entrepreneurs, Harvard Business Review, 2019 by Steven S. Rogers, Stanly Onuoha, and Kayin Barclay
Explore more on “life giving and death dealing” from African feminist theologian Mercy Oduyoye in Beads & Strands: Reflections of an African Woman on Christianity in Africa (Theology in Africa), Orbis Press (2013)

What do we do about recommendation algorithms? What ethical standards could we use to reshape technology?

SHOW NOTES

Learn more about Stewart’s work in marketing and consulting at StewartNoyce.com
See IBM promoting their work at the 1994 Winter Olympics in this vintage ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNZ7k9Kgmek
How do algorithms drive social inequality? Virginia Eubanks explains in Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police and Punish the Poor (St. Martin's Press)
What’s Afrofuturism all about? Read Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture by Ytasha L. Womack (Lawrence Hill Books)
Learn about Black entrepreneurs receiving 1% of all venture capital: Sources of Capital for Black Entrepreneurs, Harvard Business Review, 2019 by Steven S. Rogers, Stanly Onuoha, and Kayin Barclay
Explore more on “life giving and death dealing” from African feminist theologian Mercy Oduyoye in Beads & Strands: Reflections of an African Woman on Christianity in Africa (Theology in Africa), Orbis Press (2013)

Previous Episode

Introducing... Moral Repair: A Black Exploration of Tech

How can we all thrive as we navigate technology, automation, and AI in the Information Age? What have technologists, philosophers, care practitioners, and theologians learned about the innovations and worldviews shaping a new century of unprecedented tech breakthroughs and social change?

On Moral Repair: A Black Exploration of Tech, hosts Annanda Barclay and Keisha McKenzie talk with tech and spiritual leaders. Their conversations inspire curiosity about tech while showcasing practical wisdom from the African continent and diaspora to nurture wellbeing for all.

Moral Repair expands mainstream tech narratives, celebrates profound insight from Black philosophy and culture, and promotes technology when it serves the common good. Listeners leave each episode with new ways to think about tech’s impacts and apply practical wisdom in their own lives.

Starting October 4, new episodes launch every 1st and 3rd Wednesday wherever you listen to podcasts. Moral Repair is for people creating, using, and being shaped by tech, wondering about its implications, and questioning what they can do about it.

Rev. Annanda Barclay is a death doula who explores life well-lived, a non-sectarian chaplain, and a Stanford researcher of moral injury and repair as it relates to tech.
Dr. Keisha E. McKenzie is a technical communicator, strategist, and advocate who applies humanism and systems thinking to questions of well-being, public good, and ecology.

In Season 1, episode themes range from recommendation algorithms and a Black ethical standard for evaluating tech to interactive holograms and hip hop as cultural memory tools. Other episodes explore moral repair, ideologies and philosophies shaping Silicon Valley, AI ethics, inclusive design, and tech well-being.

Guests include Aral Balkan (Small Tech Foundation), Dr. Scott Hendrickson (data scientist), the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III (pastor, filmmaker, storyteller), Stewart Noyce (technologist and marketer), Zuogwi Reeves (minister and scholar), the Rev. Dr. Sakena Young-Scaggs (Stanford University’s Office of Religious & Spiritual Life, Judith Shulevitz (culture critic), and Dr. Damien Williams (professor and researcher on science, technology, and society).

Moral Repair is part of PRX’s Big Questions Project, which supports new podcasts exploring discourse with exemplary thinkers focused on humanity's most profound questions. This season is supported by the John Templeton Foundation and PRX Productions.

Next Episode

Holograms & How We Remember

Have you ever considered the moral dilemma of a hologram narrating someone's life story for them? Dive into the latest episode of Moral Repair as we interview Otis Moss III about the interactive AI hologram of his father Civil Rights Leader Otis Moss Jr. showcased at the Maltz Museum in Ohio. Discover Zuogwi Earl Reeves how the black wisdom of hip-hop plays a pivotal role in the moral repair of narrating our tales authentically. Tune into the episode and embark on this thought-provoking journey with us.

Otis Moss III pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ https://www.trinitychicago.org/rev-dr-otis-moss-iii/

Public Theologian Zuogwi Earl Reeves work https://www.zuogwiearl.com