Artwork: Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500

Artists: Kate Crawford, Vladan Joler

Response by: Jennifer Edmond, Professor in Digital Humanities, TCD, Coordinator, KT4D Project

Innovations in the field we broadly know of as Artificial Intelligence seem to have thrust us into a new manifestation of the so-called ‘hype cycle.’ Rather than having technological progress instigate inflated expectations before regularising into a more holistic cost-benefit relationship, we seem instead now to be forever chasing after the next wave of productivity-promising tool, invested as we are in socio-technical imaginaries that tell us that the further development of AI is both inevitable and necessary. This mindset encourages us to focus on what in these developments is novel, that is, the engineered advancements we are encouraged to perceive first as testaments to human ingenuity, and as potential threats to deeply held values only second (if at all). Often, however, the more important questions we need to be asking probe the ways in which these new technologies replicate and extend longstanding consolidations of power.

The wealth and privilege of FAAMG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google) companies may seem unprecedented, until we think of how feudal lords and indeed the Catholic church similarly exerted influence not only over land and labour, but over the channels by which people came to understand themselves and their world, be that the travelling bard dependent on wealthy patrons or the monks’ scriptorium. From this perspective, we are reminded of all that is familiar in the triple helix of technology, culture and power, rather than being perpetually distracted by that which is new. AI and big data may now seem uniquely deserving of both amazement and concern, but in fact, they represent only the tip of an iceberg of what we in the KT4D (Knowledge Technologies for Democracy) project refer to as knowledge technologies, the history of which leads back as far as the origin human tool-making,. This longue durée perspective can offer not only a critical distance, but also a perhaps better measuring stick for determining what among the social ills we are now seeing that have with technology seemingly at their root, are truly new, and what ones we may have seen before in different guises (or indeed have tolerated, just out of our line of sight, for far too long).

Privacy, for example, is a concern that, in its modern legal sense, arose from the rise of a new technology, photography, and the affordances and constraints that this emerging mechanism to enhance perception and memory brought in the context of journalism. Later, when the telephone proliferated in the form of shared party lines, we once again had to face the trade-offs we were making in terms of ease of communication

versus assurance of who was privy to our messages. By harnessing these historical precedents illustrating legal and cultural adaptation, we can perhaps find better ways to navigate the waters of contentious new technologically-enabled concerns, such as the protection of private personal information. Rather than cast them in terms of IT security systems and the market value of our data, we can instead recentre privacy as a mechanism to build and protect social capital and our sense of being connected, but not unduly bound, by the relational aspects of our identities.

Similarly, we can begin to imagine how new visual literacies will emerge in response to deep fake videos, just as early cinema required audiences to adapt. Most importantly, once we understand how every cool new knowledge technology shifts

(or consolidates) power, we should have a starting place to be able to imagine new forms of resistance and advocacy on behalf of those unfairly marginalised. As we move away from a stance on the ethics of technological change that assumes any

ethical problem arising due to software design can be addressed through the production of yet more lines of code, Calculating Empires is the kind of work that should both terrify and empower us. It reminds us that our technological systems are first and foremost representatives of the cultures (national, but also epistemic), interests and values that create them. The idea that we might introduce meaningful friction into these systems, to give the humans a chance to pause and think critically, and to give cultural ‘shoulds’ a chance to catch up with technological ‘cans,’ may seem anathema to the our moment of hype. Yet it may be the one thing that allows us to break the cycle of ever faster technological change begetting ever deeper gaps in our ability to know ourselves and see the world in its true complexity.

Link to view more information on the artwork: https://2024.betafestival.ie/exhibitions/unsettling-the-algorithm/Calculating%20Empires:%20A%20Genealogy%20of%20Technology%20and%20Power%20Since%201500