Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Algorithmic Sovereignty: Machine Learning, Ground Truth, And The State Of Exception, Matthew Martin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the influence of algorithmic security technology on political theories of sovereignty and the state of exception. In computer science, an exception is a special circumstance that prevents a program from terminating normally. In political theory, the state of exception, as theorized by Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben, cannot be encoded within the normal liberal legal order. With states’ increasing turn toward algorithmic answers to questions of ‘security,’ which, per Agamben, is the long-term form of the political state of exception, the relationship between the concept of the exception in these two disciplines comes to the fore. In …

Dolls Who Speak: Sex Robots, Cyborgs And The Image Of Woman, Victoria E. Pihl Sorensen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the emerging phenomenon of sex robots from a feminist materialist perspective. I explore the current scholarly and popular debates on sex robots, and suggest a reading of sex robots in their machinic, literary and cinematic expressions to move beyond the moral-ethical impasse that seems to dominate sex robot discussions. Employing Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Myth” on a methodological and theoretical level, I argue for an interdisciplinary approach to studying sex robots, which proceeds carefully so as to avoid contributing to sex panic, and which thinks critically about what it might mean to assess sex robots from a feminist …

The Vibe, Sarah P. Douglass

Capstones

The Vibe is a long-form narrative about where tech is taking the female orgasm. The piece concludes that physiological research is a required next step when creating the climax of the future.

http://sarahpdouglass.com

Ecologies Of Embodied Minds Embedded: Radical Romantic Perspectives On Architectures Of Technology, Sharmaine Browne

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores Romantic responses to the role of architectural technologies in the development of material being, consciousness, and culture by applying a critical approach in which I combine radical embodied cognitive theory, ecocritical perspectives, and a phenomenological lens to select Romantic texts written from 1789 to 1884 in response to industrial modernity. While scholarship has thoroughly explored technology as a cultural force which inevitably shapes consciousness, I propose that a slight shift of emphasis from technology’s external influence to the material internalization of its influence allows for new perspectives—particularly in light of recent proposals in cognitive philosophy which assert …

“My Brain Database Doesn’T See Skin Color” Color-Blind Racism In The Technology Industry And In Theorizing The Web, Jessie Daniels

Publications and Research

In this article, I examine three interconnected notions about color-blind racism and the Internet. The first is the fantasy that the Internet as a technology is color-blind with regard to race; the second is the reality that color-blind racism operates in the tech industry. The third notion is the way color-blind racism shapes Internet studies of race and racism, in which race is contained as a “variable” or as an “identity” that inhere exclusively in people of color, but that leaves the way race is embedded in structures, industry, and the very idea of the Internet unexamined. To explore these …

Blogging Through Motherhood: Free Labor, Femininity, And The (Re)Production Of Maternity, Kara Mary Van Cleaf

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Drawing from a thematic analysis of 47 North American mommy blogs over a 2-year period, I situate the genre in critical discussions of feminism, media, and labor, exploring both the technological and cultural shifts that turn mothers into cultural producers and that turn the experience of motherhood into a commodity. I situate the content of such blogs, or what gets said therein, within theories of media, gender, and labor. Examining the blogs within and against such academic discussions allows me to develop an intersectional analysis of feminism, media, and labor studies.