exploringsocialinformatics

[exploringsocialinformatics]

Blog #6: The Internet Could Empower Women If People Would Just Be Cool For Once

I wrote this based on the article Young Women’s Blogs as Ethical Spaces by Mia Lovheim, which I chose because I was interested by how constructive the Internet was framed and because, as a woman who has strong opinions on the internet, I know that isn’t necessarily always the case.

I have been a woman on the Internet for roughly seventeen years and it has opened up so many opportunities for me to express myself, to meet and engage with people I could’ve never connected to in real life and to collaborate with similarly-minded writers and artists. I’ve made lifelong friends online, fallen in love online (I wouldn’t recommend this but it’s fun while it lasts!) and developed so many aspects of my identity.

The only reason that I have been able to do these things is because I have done them in woman-dominated spaces and queer-dominated spaces.

Because while I’ve shared my opinions on Tumblr as a curated, personal space, I’ve shared the same opinions on Twitter and had someone threaten to rape me.

The internet is amazing! It’s also a toxic cesspool that limits my ability to express myself and open up my ideas to a wider audience! Both things are simultaneously true even though it’s sometimes difficult to rectify them.

There’s an encouraging amount of literature surrounding gender-based harassment online. Many of them give strong examples of the kind of harassment that women and female-presenting people face when they do things like say words and have emotions where people can see them online. Most women won’t need to dig into that literature because they see this in their daily lives; men experience online harassment at dissimilar rates and of a dissimilar nature (harassment aimed toward men is typically homophobic or belittling their masculinity; gendered but not nearly as violent [Jane 533]), but if they’d like to see examples of the vitriol that women face, all they need to do is read replies to tweets by women who talk about politics or sports or video games or television or music or movies or. . .you get the picture.

The point of this is not that the internet is irredeemable—although I am going to share enough of that literature that it may appear that we absolutely should burn it down and start over—but that it needs to be redeemed. We’ll get there, though.

Amnesty International has done a lot of work studying the issue of online harassment of women. In response to the #WomenBoycottTwitter day, they commissioned a poll that included women between the ages of 18 and 55 in Denmark, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the UK and USA. They found that 33% of women in the United States had experienced online harassment or abuse—and it’s important to remember the context that these are not all necessarily people who are actively using social media, especially considering the age range (”Amnesty Reveals Alarming [. . .]”).

TIME reports that the United Nations did a study that said that 73% of women have experienced online harassment—I would lean toward accepting theirs as it seems Amnesty’s sample size was limited (Alter 2015).

I’m going to toss out a list of statistics that came from the Amnesty poll that are genuinely upsetting to consider:

41% of women who had experienced harassment were made to feel physically unsafe

26% were doxxed by their harassers

46% said the harassment was rooted in misogyny specifically

25% were threatened with physical or sexual violence  (Amnesty International 2017)

Remembering again that this was a poll targeting women and not just women who are regular social media users, these numbers are staggering. And these aren’t just individual occurrences or one-off attacks. The nature of Twitter in particular means that messages spread rapidly—and so do attacks. According to studies of Twitter’s abuse reports, at least 29% of the reports filed by women were addressing ongoing attacks (Women, Action & Media) and according to an additional poll from Amnesty: the more visible and vocal a woman in, the more frequent harassment she’ll endure. A study of 778 female politicians and journalists (disproportionately women of color) found that they received abusive tweets every 30 seconds—1.1 million a year between them.

I couldn’t possibly get into #GamerGate here and give it the attention it deserves but, if you managed to avoid that nightmare in 2014, it’s something to look up that will really cement this problem for you.

And it is a problem—but it’s not just a problem because women feel threatened, because allowing a culture of harassment and degradation like this is inherently wrong, because this is something that impacts our lives on a semi-regular basis even if we’re not public figures. It’s also a problem because women are being silenced.

Even back in the early 90s before the insane access that we all have to each other online, women were “found to introduce fewer topics of discussion and receive fewer public responses than men” (Megarry 29). It’s no different than women speaking less in a classroom or meeting (Tannen 2017)—just a different venue. That form of silence seems more rooted in social norms, though, and in the early 2000s, according to Rodriguez-Darias and Aguilera-Avila, “the expansion of the online world was hailed as a catalyst for the development of democracy, equality and women’s empowerment by enabling access to information and social support” (63).

All of that is still true in 2020 and has made an incalculable difference to women all across the world. It’s just that now they’re statistically far more likely to receive hundreds of threats of violence and rape and have their address shared all across social media platforms because they said something about a video game.

Those threats and that atmosphere that makes women feel unsafe and like they can’t truly express themselves creates a framework that holds women back. When I said that I formed my identity on the Internet, it’s some of the most tender important parts of me—if I had been faced with this kind of harassment when I was younger, it would have been detrimental and I would have lost one of the few safe spaces I felt I had. People use the internet to convey their identities in so many ways that can be taken away from women: hashtags “convey attitudes and social identity” (Fox, Cruz, Lee) but also makes it easier for harassers to target you, “gendered avatars and usernames” (Assuncao) allow for gender expression that. . .makes it easier for harassers to target you, and all of these things tie into self-esteem that women could be building if they had access to positive, empowering communities. And it is unquestionably impacting their self-esteem: according to Amnesty International’s report, 61% of women experienced lower self-esteem and Emma A. Jane compiled information about how women described their experiences with online harassment, with words like “distress, pain, shock, fear, terror, devastation and violation” (536).

Because of that distress, that fear, that terror—women self-censor themselves. According to the same Amnesty report, 76% changed the way they used Twitter after facing attacks and 32% stopped talking about certain topics altogether. By being forced to endure the same gendered violence and discrimination that we face in the real world in a virtual setting, it’s like there’s no escape.

There’s one issue that can be brought up to complicate this: freedom of speech. This argument doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny on a base level. Social media networks aren’t actually entirely beholden to the First Amendment—which prevents the government from silencing you, although its reach has differed—and Twitter has a conduct policy that prohibits threats, slurs, degrading people, wishing ill on people, etc (Hateful Conduct Policy). The Internet often exists as a lawless, Wild West-type place, though (your Reddits when poorly monitored, your 4Chans, for example), and there will always be people on it that will believe that the freedom to speak their minds supersedes everything else. Freedom of speech is important and these are useful conversations to have to make sure that the platforms that we’re using are operating equitably.

A platform that allows women to be shamed or threatened into silence is not operating equitably, though. We should have the freedom to speak openly without worrying about our safety. Twitter is already addressing this issue but it hasn’t been enough—according to the survey of their abuse reports, only 55% of reports led to suspended accounts, 67% of women who reported said they’d done so at least twice and, mostly notably—Twitter’s staff at the time of their study (2014) was 79% men (Women, Action & Media).

Let’s loop back around to my ultimate point here: redeeming the Internet. Focusing on Twitter, there are plenty of plans of actions they could take to do better, including hiring more women and actively listening to their feedback, training their employees more thoroughly to recognize and address forms of harassment, and being more open about condemning both misogyny and other systemic issues like the spread of White Supremacy. These are all relatively small steps that could start to change the wider culture and start the inevitably unbearably slow process of detoxifying the Internet so it’s accessible for everyone.

Resources

Alter, C. (2015, September 24). UN: Cyber Violence is Equivalent to Physical Violence. Retrieved from https://time.com/4049106/un-cyber-violence-physical-violence/

Amnesty and Element AI release largest ever study into abuse against women on Twitter. (2018, December 18). Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/12/crowdsourced-twitter-study-reveals-shocking-scale-of-online-abuse-against-women/ 

Amnesty reveals alarming impact of online abuse against women. (2017, November 20). Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/11/amnesty-reveals-alarming-impact-of-online-abuse-against-women/

Assuncao, Carina. (2016). “No girls on the internet”: The experience of female gamers in the masculine space of violent gaming.” Press Start, 3(1).

Fox, J., Cruz, C., & Lee, J. Y. (2015). Perpetuating online sexism offline: Anonymity, interactivity, and the effects of sexist hashtags on social media. Computers in Human Behavior, 52, 436–442.

Jane, E. A. (2012). “Your a Ugly, Whorish, Slut.” Feminist Media Studies, 14(4), 531–546.

Megarry, J. (2014). Online incivility or sexual harassment? Conceptualizing women’s experiences in the digital age. Women’s Studies International Forum, 47, 46–55. 

Rodríguez-Darias, A. J., & Aguilera-Ávila, L. (2018). Gender-based harassment in cyberspace. The case of Pikara magazine. Womens Studies International Forum, 66, 63–69.

Tannen, D. (2017, June 28). Do Women Really Talk More Than Men? Retrieved from https://time.com/4837536/do-women-really-talk-more/

Twitter. (2020). Hateful conduct policy. Retrieved from https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-conduct-policy

Women, Action & Media. (2015, May 15). Reporting, Reviewing, and Responding to Harassment on Twitter.

[exploringsocialinformatics]

Blog #5: Who Gets To Be A Patron?

I’m writing this based on the article Almost Home by Rebecca A. Hill. I was interested in it because of some of my own experiences in public libraries and my brother’s experience working directly with people who are unhoused. I took the information I learned about all the cool, positive things that libraries are doing and criticized them instead because that’s who I am as a person.

There’s no doubt that public libraries are important to many patrons who are homeless and just need someplace to exist. Libraries are also doing a lot to welcome these patrons and provide what they’re capable of providing. For example, one thing that comes up consistently in this conversation is the need to have social workers and potentially psychiatric help available at the library. This is a wonderful idea but, in many ways, unrealistic for where many libraries are—budget-wise, libraries can hardly afford to staff for routine positions and particularly for professional positions.

One thing I’d like to confront before I dig in is, other than the limitations of these ideas, is the limitation of assisting people dealing with homelessness exclusively within the walls of the library. Libraries do outreach to all different parts of the community—why not this one?

I talked to my brother, who is the executive director of the Urban Outreach Center of New York City (an organization dedicated to assisting people who are unhoused in specific parts of the city), about his experiences with libraries connecting with shelters. He’s seen representatives from the NYPL setting up tables at dinners and other events with information about library services—which is awesome—but not much other than that. When I asked about what connections that libraries can make with shelters and other programs to better ally with them and he emphasized what I really want to talk about: library cards.

One criticism I have of many libraries is strict policies surrounding getting library cards. My brother put it in the exact terms I’ve been considering while speculating about this: several people have told them that having a library card makes them feel more like legitimate patrons. It gives them a sense of ownership that I personally think all citizens should have towards their libraries: they’re all stakeholders in its existence and they all belong there regardless of their living situation or socioeconomic status.

When libraries require residential addresses to get library cards, they are saying—whether they believe this or not—that permanent residency is a requirement for checking out library materials. This goes directly against the ALA’s Core Values, which states, “All information resources that are provided directly or indirectly by the library, regardless of technology, format, or methods of delivery, should be readily, equally, and equitably accessible to all library users” (“Access to Library Resources and Services”). This is not and should not be limited to users with permanent residency or users that pay property tax or users that libraries deem acceptable or safe.

If libraries claim to be committed to equitable access to materials and services, they need to actually live by this claim. There are too many libraries with too many policies to get a decent number but a quick scroll through a Google search of [“proof of residency” + library card] shows a variety of libraries in a variety of areas that follow this policy.

Some libraries do provide library cards to people using a reference from the shelter they’re staying at; the NYPL does this (“Get a Library Card Guide”) as well as offering a variety of options that could work as identification, though I had to dig a little bit to actually find the information, since it wasn’t available along with the other information about getting cards on their website. This is a great way to establish a relationship not only with patrons who are homeless but with the shelters themselves, which could open up outreach opportunities—opportunities to not only address the needs of citizens who are homeless but to meet them where they are and offer those services.

I want to come back to the word equitable. Providing library cards regardless of someone’s housing status is just base level equity, emphasizing that all patrons should be treated the same and all rules should be enforced in the same way whenever possible. All libraries should operate like this.

I will admit that it’s difficult for me to see the other side of an argument for more open library card policies because, while they obviously exist and are the norm, I feel they have no founding in the principals we’re taught to live by and that libraries should be striving for. So I want to address this from a different mindset: some people will always treat libraries more like a business than a public service. This is anecdotal data from my own work in public libraries and from other libraries I’ve read about but some library administrators appear to care more about getting people to pay fines and fees than actually getting people to use the library. This isn’t inherently a villainous side to take; I am absolutely not well-versed in what it takes to run a library and I know that it’s easier to take the ALA’s side of truth and light over actual hard numbers when you don’t have to deal with those numbers. It is likely also easier to pin down the impact of certain policies at an individual library or library system, which could inspire these policies. 

Overall, the need to hold people accountable like that seems to be what’s guiding policies of limiting cards to those with a permanent address: does a person living without permanent housing mean that they’re less likely to return material? Will they pay the fees if they don’t do so? There’s no doubt that there are people who won’t follow what they agree to and that it could impact revenue which, in times where budgets are constantly threatened all across the country, could be potentially significant depending on the size of the library.

These are legitimate things to think about outside of the grander, moral issue but the real problem is: they seemed to be based primarily in speculation. As far as I can tell, there is not concise, definitive data on how many materials are lost in libraries yearly (“shrinkage,” if we want to go all in on this and be corporate). There is also no definitive data on whether or not a person’s housing situation has any known impact on their borrowing habits, other than the fact that those habits are typically limited. It is absolutely discriminatory to deny people who are homeless library cards when they’re residing in your county and using your library and, even worse, it appears to be discrimination founded in nothing definitive—in people’s ideas of how someone who is homeless will behave.

It’s impossible to think about these issues without also talking about how several libraries have decided to go fine-free—which doesn’t necessarily have a huge financial impact on them; this will differ with smaller libraries but the Chicago Public Library estimated their revenue per year from fines and it only equaled out to about 1% of their budget (Poon). If we’re going to talk about equitable access, this is a fine example that brings patrons back into the library that got stuck with fines they couldn’t afford. This is where all libraries should be headed and the ethos we should be striving for.

Even when you look at those fine-free libraries, though, many of their policies perpetuate the same issues I’ve been discussing. Some of them have cards specifically made for people who are in situations that leave them without permanent residence or proper documentation, which seems like a good step and undoubtedly is better than most policies that don’t address the issue at all, but also. . .why does there need to be a separate card? Are we considering the implications of that?  

Berkeley Public Library introduced their Easy Access cards in 2018 which allows people in the situations I addressed above to use in-house computers and to check out three items (Peet). The limit for a regular card is seventy five items. I don’t want to question whether or not this is laudable because it absolutely is but when you look at the bigger picture, it’s still limiting access to someone based on unfounded concerns.

Public library policies should apply to all patrons regardless of who they are or what’s going on in their life. The fact that public libraries feel they should decide what certain patrons are allowed to have, if they’re allowed to have anything at all, shows a larger fundamental issue within our community that needs to be addressed.

People who are homeless are not problems or risks. They’re patrons and they’re citizens. They should be treated like it.  

Sources

Access to Library Resources and Services. (2019, July 13). Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/access

Peet, L. (2019, January 23). Berkeley PL Launches Cards for Patrons Without Fixed Address. Retrieved from https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=Berkeley-PL-Launches-Cards-for-Patrons-Without-Fixed-Address

Poon, L. (2019, October 9). Why Libraries Are Eliminating Late Fees for Overdue Books. Retrieved from https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/10/public-library-late-fees-chicago-san-francisco-equity-access/599194/

Your Card. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/library/your-card#Easy_Access_Card

[exploringsocialinformatics]

Blog #4: I Didn’t Enjoy Siding With Apple In An Argument But Here We Are

I wrote this based on information from the article Feds Can’t Force You To Unlock Your Phone With Finger or Face, Judge Rules by Thomas Brewster because I was really interested in the story about Apple and the FBI after the San Bernardino shooting and wanted to explore that connection.

The story of Apple refusing to give the FBI access to the phone belonging to the man who committed the 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino—more specifically, refusing to give them a backdoor method that would allow them to access any locked iPhone—is one of the most interesting stories that hits the intersection of privacy and technology in recent years. It’s an extreme example that poses the question: at what point is law enforcement allowed to compromise our constitutionally promised right to privacy? If there was ever a compelling reason to break into a phone, collecting evidence about a mass shooting would surely be one of them.  

Apple ultimately refused to comply with the FBI’s request; Tim Cook said in his statement, “In the wrong hands, this software—which does not exist today—would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession,” and, indicating the intense pressure they’d received,  “We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack” (Kahney 2019).

Apple ultimately made a difficult decision that they received extensive criticism for to make an important point: giving the FBI the ability to access every iPhone could easily lead to huge violations of privacy on their part, if not even worse actions on other groups who might get their hands on it illegally. This very specific example sets up what I want to do today, which is how these kinds of issues could potentially impact anybody that uses a mobile device and why it’s important that we have strong, clear laws in place that prevent abuse by law enforcement.

The crux of these issues goes back to the fourth and fifth amendments, which protect our right to privacy and against self-incrimination, respectively and amongst many other rights. Both come into play when considering this, as most of the current legislation is focused on phones as containing potential incriminating access.

I went down such a rabbit hole of court decisions while I was researching this because there’s been a lot of rulings about this from lower courts up to the Supreme Court in the last decade specifically, which makes sense: technology has been rapidly growing and changing and legislators are clearly and reasonably struggling to catch up. Here are some of the main players when it comes to Supreme Court legislation related to technology:

·       Riley vs. California (2014) – The warrantless search and seizure of digital contents of a cellphone is unconstitutional.

·       Carpenter vs. United States (2018) – Accessing historical records containing the physical locations of cellphones is unconstitutional.

·       Katz vs. United States – Extends Fourth Amendment protection beyond the traditional confines of citizens’ homes and property—emphasized the need for a “reasonable expectation of privacy.”

The cases that have made it to the Supreme Court have set a fairly strong precedent for protecting the Fourth Amendment rights of citizens when it comes to their phones and they’ve done so in a way that essentially treats mobile phones as a physical structure that contains property, just like a house. Katz vs. United States, having been established in 1967 and originally connected to wiretapping, is notoriously difficult to apply but it’s still a strong foundation.

The real thing that’s up in the air and that needs to be discussed more thoroughly is the Fifth Amendment—namely, whether or not law enforcement can force you to turn over a password to your device or to use your face or fingerprint to get into your device via biometrics. The Supreme Court hasn’t heard arguments over this yet but it’s becoming a more and more common issue in lower courts, with significant decisions being made as recently as November 2019, when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the Fifth Amendment prevents people from being forced to turn over their passwords (Commonwealth vs. Davis) and January 2019, when a judge in California ruled that police officers can’t force people to use biometrics on their phone to open them (Brewster). These are particularly notable because they continue to apply regardless of whether or not a warrant exists because the judges are attempting to make a case that exposing whatever is on your device is the same thing as incriminating yourself with testimony.

The most compelling argument to me is the possibility of this power being abused. If the Supreme Court never hears cases like this and makes definite decisions on what law enforcement can and can’t do, then the limited power of the lower courts is—well, limited. Without a standard, we could be facing the potential for things like police fishing for other potential crimes based off the contents of a phone (Schuppe 2019), using content on phones out of context, increased abilities to manufacture evidence (McLaughlin 2016) and the possibility of police sharing information taken from phones with other law enforcement related to activities for which they’ve not yet received a warrant (Kerr 2017). There’s enough evidence out there of law enforcement attempting to work outside the bounds of the law (for instance, the FBI ended up hiring a professional hacker to get into the San Bernardino shooter’s phone, circumventing Apple’s choice [Nakashima 2016]) that it’s increasingly obvious that the lines need to be much clearer.

I can see how the San Bernardino attack is more than enough evidence for people who think that law enforcement should have more access to evidence that might be found on people’s phones. Similarly, issues with child pornography and other kinds of exploitation infinitely complicates this. When it comes down to it, though, we’re faced as a nation with a broader version of Apple’s conflict: do we potentially sacrifice privacy as a whole because of the actions of a few? The crimes we’re talking about absolutely make this a conversation and in an ideal world it would be possible to create a system in which particular crimes can exist within a particular set of parameters that allows for easier justice without threatening the rights of others. Our world is less than ideal, though, and these large swathes of moral gray need to exist within constitutionally protected black and white that treats every citizen the same.

The Supreme Court needs to acknowledge the cases that are being made by judges all across the country and make their decision on exactly how acquiring information on cellphones pertains to the Fifth Amendment so we can begin to create structures that protect our constitutional right to privacy and prevent overreach by law enforcement. 

Resources: 

Brewster, Thomas. (2019, January 14). Feds Can’t Force You To Unlock Your iPhone With Finger Or Face, Judge Rules. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/01/14/feds-cant-force-you-to-unlock-your-iphone-with-finger-or-face-judge-rules/#13e4480542b7

Kahney, Leander. (2019, April 16). The FBI Wanted a Back Door to the iPhone. Tim Cook Said No. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/the-time-tim-cook-stood-his-ground-against-fbi/

Kerr, O. (2017, February 21). Analysis | The police can't just share the contents of a seized iPhone with other agencies, court rules. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/02/21/the-police-cant-just-share-the-contents-of-a-seized-iphone-with-other-agencies-court-rules/

McLaughlin, Jenna. (2016, May 5). FBI Told Cops to Recreate Evidence From Secret Cell-Phone Trackers. Retrieved from: https://theintercept.com/2016/05/05/fbi-told-cops-to-recreate-evidence-from-secret-cell-phone-trackers/

Nakashima, E. (2016, April 12). FBI paid professional hackers one-time fee to crack San Bernardino iPhone. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-paid-professional-hackers-one-time-fee-to-crack-san-bernardino-iphone/2016/04/12/5397814a-00de-11e6-9d36-33d198ea26c5_story.html

Schuppe, Jon. (2019, June 7). Give Up Your Password or Go To Jail: Police Push Legal Boundaries To Get Into Cellphones. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/give-your-password-or-go-jail-police-push-legal-boundaries-n1014266

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Post #3: A Lovely Impossible Dream

I wrote this post based on the article “The Pill That Costs $9000 in US Sells for $70 in India,” which I chose because I just have a lot of feelings about access to healthcare, especially considering it’s such a hot topic in the US at the moment. I took the general idea of disparate access to medication between various countries and went on a bit of a globalist screed.

There should be a global, regulated, human rights-focused manufacturer of generic, necessary medications.

I should go ahead and say this is wildly speculative and probably (almost definitely—like, somewhere between 99.999% and 150%) impossible, but I truly believe we should dream as high as possible to at least get closer to a better world, so bear with me as I weave this pie in the sky dream of a global community of people not dying from easily preventable diseases.

The United States’ pharmaceutical industry is a nightmare. Based on the article from The Times of India, India’s is certainly better—if by “better,” we mean, “better for the people who need medication,” which would be the ideal focus (Nagarajan). But putting any price on life-saving medication that’s already cheap to manufacture is in and of itself a telling statement on the value we place on our global citizens, especially when the medication could be manufactured outside of a competitive industry and provided at a fraction of the cost.

Or there could be virtually no cost if it could be sponsored entirely by the governments of the world or through the same foreign aid given out via the United Nations—in fact, based just on the impact that the United States has already had on global health, it’s easy to imagine that supplying more cost effective medication would only make it easier for us to give as much if not more than we have in year prior. After all, as it was addressed in a Stanford Medical article, these donations rarely cost more than 1% of the US’s GDP (Bendavid). Imagine if that medication was already being produced via a global pharmaceutical manufacturer and they didn’t have to go through the complications of mixing public and private interests to go about distributing this aid.

Free medication for the whole world is admittedly something that probably wakes wealthy industry executives up in the night, sweating and terrified, and I’ll touch on how that could hold it back in moment, but as I said: pie in the sky.

In The Globalization of the Pharmaceutical Industry, J.L. Valverde addresses several aspects of global pharmaceutical policy that would need to be the focus if we were to better bring together the pharmaceutical industries from different nations for the greater good, including the involvement of international organizations such as the World Health Organization and The Global Fund—who, according to him, have “facilitated the immense improvement in access to HIV/AIDS treatment over the last 15 years” (22) among many other accomplishments.

Imagine if we could use existing organizations like the WHO to establish generic pharmaceutical manufacturing that is equitable to all who seek their help—or, at least, to use their focus on policy to create a new organization. Not only would this make a huge impact on health specifically but it would be a global method: we’re in this together. When we’re facing huge issues like climate change that will require multiple countries to work together (Zavis 2015) to literally save the world, working together to save our people—treating all people of all countries like our people regardless of where you live—is a significant, improbable, beautiful step in the right direction.

Are there significant issues with implementing a global policy like this? Absolutely—there will always be significant issues when you are attempting to disrupt a power as big as the pharmaceutical industry, and my lack of in-depth experience in both pharmaceutical policy and global economies is holding back a full investment in my own argument. The scope and depth of this argument are difficult to determine and certainly not something that could be covered in a blog post. If I’m speculating, though—and as I said, wildly—I can address the issues essentially as well as I can the greater possibilities.

The biggest issue that I would point to in terms of what would hold this idea, good or bad, back is the fact that the pharmaceutical industry in the US has consistently donated the most to campaigns for congressional seats than any other lobby (Evers-Hillstrom 2019), which affords a lot of power to a significant portion of the global industry to influence lawmakers. In terms of criticism, though, a central argument is that something that takes away that much power from the people who have developed those medications would be a violation of their rights. This article from The Globalist is from 2000 but it had the most concise description of this argument framed against the concept of a government manufacturer that I could find, saying, “Locally produced drugs would, of course, be much less expensive than those produced in the United States [referring to African countries manufacturing their own drugs]. But to U.S. trade authorities and drug companies, this represents a gross abuse of U.S. intellectual property rights” (“Medical Socialism”).

I don’t want to completely dismiss the idea of intellectual property rights, nor do I completely want to dismiss similar arguments like the idea that it would keep industry leaders (the people who own the patents that constrict smaller companies from competing but also the people who are consistently developing important medications) from continuing to innovate and explore new possibilities. While, based on the profits they make, I am skeptical something like someone else producing a limited array of generic medication (probably based on the WHO’s “Essential Medications List,” though it is admittedly long [2020]) would hold them back that much, there’s no denying that this would have an impact on the economy surrounding the pharmaceutical industry and the economy as a whole. And, again, I can’t successfully argue what that impact would be because this idea is untested but it’s a potential red flag against it.

An argument that’s a little more grounded in reality and certainly more achievable is to have government-manufactured generic medication on a national or even state/province level in countries where this is possible. There are at least two significant proposals that have come out of the United States in the last few months supporting this concept. Elizabeth Warren sponsored a bill in late 2019 that would create an Office of Drug Manufacturing under the Department of Health and Human Services, saying, “The solution here is not to replace markets, but to fix them. The Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act will introduce more competition into the prescription drug market, and bring down prices for consumers” (Warren 2019).

More recently, just last month in January of 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom of California has proposed similar legislation, described as, “part of a multi-prong effort that includes strengthening the state’s public option for health insurance and increasing drug pricing transparency” (Lin).

The concept of governments individually manufacturing their own generic medication to take place within the pharmaceutical marketplace is incredibly progressive and also infinitely more sellable than a global manufacturer—especially one giving out medication for free. The first can fit relatively easily within the pharmaceutical industry as we know it while the latter would. . .probably require a dramatic global transition of moral priorities, which is not something that’s likely to be achieved. Like I said, though, we may as well dream big. Coming from my own perspective, the very fact that we have pharmaceutical industries at all represents a degree of moral deficit. But if we start within the bigger framework that the health of the world as a whole—especially that of struggling, marginalized people who already lack access to proper healthcare—is the most important factor when thinking about healthcare and pharmaceutical production, maybe we’ll at least get nudged in the right direction even if my own wild starry-eyed globalist dream is out of reach.

 Resources

Bendavid, E. (2019, May 16). Foreign aid for public health bolsters America's 'soft power'. Retrieved from https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2019/05/foreign-aid-for-public-health-bolsters-americas-soft-power.html

The Globalist. (2000, July 10). Medical Socialism. Retrieved from https://www.theglobalist.com/medical-socialism/

Lin, J., & Aguilera, E. (2020, January 11). Gov. Gavin Newsom to propose that California manufacture its own generic drugs. Retrieved from https://calmatters.org/health/2020/01/gavin-newsom-to-propose-california-manufacture-state-generic-drugs/

Nagarajan, R. (2016, February 7). The pill that costs $9,000 in US sells for $70 in India - Times of India. Retrieved from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health-news/The-pill-that-costs-9000-in-US-sells-for-70-in-India/articleshow/50887471.cms

Valverde, J. L. (2016). The Globalization of the Pharmaceutical Industry. Retrieved from https://www.ifpma.org/resource-centre/the-globalization-of-the-pharmaceutical-industry/

Warren, Elizabeth. (2019, December 20). Schakowsky, Warren Reintroduce Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act, Legislation to Radically Reduce Drug Prices through Public Manufacturing of Prescription Drugs. Retrieved from https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/schakowsky-warren-reintroduce-affordable-drug-manufacturing-act-legislation-to-radically-reduce-drug-prices-through-public-manufacturing-of-prescription-drugs

World Health Organization. (2020, February 3). WHO Model Lists of Essential Medicines. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/medicines/publications/essentialmedicines/en/

Zavis, A., Megerian, C., & Yardley, W. (2015, December 12). Nearly 200 nations join together to fight climate change in historic Paris agreement. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-climate-talks-20151212-story.html

[exploringsocialinformatics]

Blog #2: Do Androids Dream Of Tenured Positions?

I wrote this in response to the article “Imagine How Great Universities Could Be Without All Those Human Teachers” by Allison Schrager and Amy Wang. I chose to write about it because of my background in education, because I feel like I really benefited a lot from the personal connections I made with my human professors in undergrad and also because I’m scared of robots.

I admit that the concept of AI does terrify me a little so I really had to reevaluate my anti-robot bias as I tried to figure out exactly where I stood in the fairly confusing lane between AI technology as a helpful assistant and AI technology as a terrifying force coming to steal jobs from professors. After careful consideration, though, I’ve come to a firm conclusion: not only should AI/automation in general not be wholesale replacing human labor, we don’t actually have to let it wholesale replace human labor. Inevitability sometimes only exists because we make something inevitable. The robots aren’t making themselves.

Or. . .I guess they kind of are, but--you know what I mean.

The choice to replace any job with AI technology instead of utilizing AI and adapting that job to both benefit the worker and to add more diverse tasks that couldn’t be accomplished by a machine is fundamentally a choice in favor of profit over people. I realize that it’s naive to think that major corporations or even universities might choose people over profit but, with the smallest percentage of hope I have left for the world, I know that it’s at least an option.

For example, the McKinsey Institute (not a group of folks who I would assume would be pushing for human decency) has laid out plans for the future of retail workers when automation is more of an established presence in their establishments. They reference already existing examples, writing, “Several grocers, for example, are creating new roles for in-store pickers and e-commerce distribution centers. [. . .] Meanwhile, McDonald’s has not only introduced table service in restaurants but also rolled out self-service ordering kiosks. Best Buy has pushed further into adjacent services, creating new customer-service roles in its In-Home Advisor and Total Tech Support programs and retraining employees for them” (Begley, Hancock). The ideal here is shifting labor, not replacing it.  

With all of that in mind, I feel compelled to take a moral stance here: this is less an issue of technology and more an issue of properly compensating employees. The human ones with skin and hearts and stuff, whose humanness is often a key factor of their job. And this is especially true of educators, whether K - 12 or higher education.

The notion that AI can replace professors just goes to show the fundamental disrespect that we as a society have for educators. This is something that we can see in how little they’re paid (especially adjuncts, who don’t nearly make enough to survive [Douglas-Gabriel]). It’s also ignoring the possibility of shifting their labor. This argument requires that we’re all on the same page that higher education should be about expanding knowledge: replacing the day to day work of grading or answering easily answerable questions with the help of AI, in an ideal world, wouldn’t mean job losses for TAs or potentially un-tenured professors. If universities properly focused their money (for example, focusing more on professors than administration [Lewis]), academics and robots could peacefully co-exist. Imagine a world where professors won’t have to worry about minutiae and instead have time to focus on research and writing and other things that are the reason they got into academia and that will actively make them better teachers. Imagine a world where TAs get real world experience actively helping with that research. Professors who have more time to work with students one on one! To write grants! To live more fulfilled and meaningful lives!

It’s exciting!

Again, naive and probably idealistic, especially considering that this would require universities to radically change their budgets. It would be also likely require more funding and more specified funding from the federal government for public universities. These are both very large feats.

In his paper Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? David H. Autor backs up my idyllic academic vision when he states that, on top of replacing labor, “automation also complements labor, raises output in ways that lead to higher demand for labor, and interacts with adjustments in labor supply” (2015). Essentially, the purpose of automation should be to make life easier for people, not to displace them.

There are a few significant arguments in favor of focusing more funds on AI in academic institutions that I find compelling, many of them focused on the students. On a base social level, I would probably have been more comfortable addressing a robot as an anxious undergrad than I would my professors and having a resource that would be available more frequently than a human could possibly be would be a comfort. Schrager and Wang explain the software created by the company Hobsons and how it can figure out demographics that might be struggling and use it to identify specific students that are close to dropping out. This is described as “granular,” (3) which is important--after all, professors are notably human. They can’t catch and parse small things like that, especially with crowded classrooms.

Another argument is that investing in technology that can directly help students and takes over the bulk of teaching saves money because you can hire fewer professors; ultimately, this could be worth the loss (7 - 8). If AI can do the menial labor behind teaching, why pay a human to do it when that requires a consistent salary and when the money could be used in ways that would more directly benefit--as was already mentioned--far more students than a single professor could reach? Kristin Houser writes, on the online publication Futurism, in regard to K - 12 teachers being replaced that “after the initial development costs, administrators wouldn’t need to worry about paying digital teachers. This saved money could then be used to pay for the needed updates to education facilities or other costs” (“The Situation to Our Education Crisis”), which seemingly supports the same claim about colleges. She also adds--and I find the idea that this technology would function so efficiently and without bias far more idealistic than anything I believe, but it’s still good to think about--that “digital teachers wouldn’t need days off and would never be late for work. Administrators could upload any changes to curricula [. . .] and the systems would never make mistakes. If programmed correctly, they also wouldn’t show any biases toward students based on gender, race, socio-economic status, personality preference, or other consideration” (Houser). These are all certainly elements that could positively impact education if they functioned well enough.

Even with both sides of the coin, though, there’s some evidence that the coin itself is less relevant than we think. There have been several studies which point out that automation isn’t killing off manufacturing jobs at nearly the rate that people have been expecting. Jared Bernstein, former chief financial advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, wrote in the Washington Post that the sharp decline in manufacturing jobs after 2000 had more to do with trade than it did automation (“Contrary to Popular Wisdom”). This was also a contentious moment in a Democratic Primary debate last fall between Senator Elizabeth Warren and entrepreneur Andrew Yang, with the former supporting Bernstein’s claim and the latter supporting the issues with automation. According to Politifacts, both the candidates were effectively right (Greenberg). So, essentially, this isn’t to say that automation isn’t part of the problem, it’s just that the situation is likely not as dramatic as economists and others have made it out to be.

Also, there certainly aren’t clear indicators that automation will be taking over academia specifically anytime soon. To say otherwise seems unnecessarily fear-inducing. As I said, though, I might be naive. Maybe college professors and TAs should be stocking up on whatever weapons are most effective against a robot uprising (. . .water?) or at least updating their resumes. If this does become a trend, though, I sincerely hope that the inherent value of good, earnest, sentient human educators is considered. As someone who primarily took undergrad classes in the humanities, the lived experiences of a professor often go hand in hand with their own education to make them more effective at relating to students. Giving up a fully realized, authentic education just for a more efficient one isn’t worth it.

Resources

Autor, D. H. (2015). Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29(3), 3–30.

Begley, S, Hancock, B. (n.d.). Automation in retail: An executive overview for getting ready. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/automation-in-retail-an-executive-overview-for-getting-ready

Bernstein, J. (2018, July 12). Contrary to popular wisdom, automation is not a job killer in U.S. manufacturing. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/07/12/contrary-to-popular-wisdom-automation-is-not-a-job-killer-in-u-s-manufacturing/

Douglas-Gabriel, D. (2019, February 15). 'It Keeps You Nice and Disposable': The Plight of Adjunct Professors. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/it-keeps-you-nice-and-disposable-the-plight-of-adjunct-professors/2019/02/14/6cd5cbe4-024d-11e9-b5df-5d3874f1ac36_story.html

Greenberg, J. (2019, October 16). What's the Manufacturing Job Killer, Automation or Trade? . Retrieved from https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/oct/16/both-trade-and-automation-hurt-and-helped-jobs-whi/

Houser, K. (2018, January 17). The solution to our education crisis might be AI. Retrieved from https://futurism.com/ai-teachers-education-crisis

Lewis, N. (2017, February 17). U.S. Colleges: Where Does The Money Go? Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanlewis/2017/02/17/u-s-colleges-where-does-the-money-go/

Schrager, A., & Wang, A. X. (2017, September 27). Imagine how great universities could be without all those human teachers. Retrieved from https://qz.com/1065818/ai-university/

[exploringsocialinformatics]

Post #1: A One-to-One Utopia

I am basing this post off the article “One Laptop Per Child: Vision vs. Reality” by Kenneth L. Kraemer, Jason Dedrick, and Prakul Sharma, which I chose both because the timeline of the issue was very interesting and also due to my background in a Secondary Education program where I took courses related specifically to education and technology.

I am wary of anybody who says that they’re going to change the world, but the transition from reading about the Utopian vision of One Laptop, Per Child (creator Nicholas Negroponte once said that they were “invent[ing] the future” [“The Hundred Dollar Laptop: Computing for Developing Nations”]) to the slow but seemingly inevitable downfall was still somewhat surprising. The program is one that had been within my peripheral vision as someone who studied education in my undergrad program and I can understand how people got swept up in the concept, especially when the technology available was less accessible. On first glance, it does seem revolutionary and, in ways, it is. Revolution requires follow-through and support, though, and it inspired doubts even before its initial roll-out, with supporters expressing hesitant skepticism like, “We were excited about the prospects, but kind of scared by the over-simplistic plan, or lack of plan” (Robertson, 2018).

As Kraemer, Dedrick and Sharma note, the issues behind OLPC’s original downfall were based in seemingly more consideration for the creation of the hardware than the people they were creating the hardware for (66 – 68). There are plenty of these issues to talk about—the entirely reasonable argument that basic needs like water and physical school structures should be met before the government spends money on untested technology, the notion that OLPC is just a “one size-fits-all American solution to complex global problems” that functions more as a “marketing ploy” (Robertson 2018) than any type of organized program—when it comes to observing why OLPC struggled to the point where they shuttered their organization until it was relatively recently revived. I would argue, though, that one of its fundamental flaws and potentially the most immediately debilitating was their lack of consideration for teachers and, in particular, their lack of follow-through when it comes to measuring their success.

In The Effect of One Laptop per Child on Teachers’ Pedagogical Practices and Students’ Use of Time At Home, a very thorough study that had to be thorough due to a lack of substantive data from OLPC’s program, the researchers found that there was no significant impact on school performance when the laptops were introduced in Peru (Yamada, Lavado, Montenegro 2016). Additionally, Morgan G. Ames—who I will reference several times due to her excellent research in Uruguay—found that the laptop use was largely focused on media consumption: music, TV, video games (Ames 2015). While media consumption absolutely has a place within education, it’s clear that this usage isn’t falling within the realm of what Negroponte was envisioning: namely, programming (Ames 2015) and creation. Essentially, the laptops are often a tool to consume and not create.

In a presentation titled the same as her recent book, The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death and Legacy of One Laptop per Child, Ames explains in-depth the fundamental issues that marred the program from its inception—extremely worth watching if this topic interests you and a fantastic introduction—and tells the story of how Nicholas Negroponte’s main goal was to get laptops in the hands of children and trust that they would make the most of it on their own (Ames 2019). Kraemer, Dedrick and Sharma emphasize this, saying in 2009 that “it appears to some that the educational mission has given way to just getting laptops out the door” (66), which implies even more explicitly that the intentions skew a bit more towards business than ever stated by the organization—or, at the very least, attempting to save face when it became apparent they would not make their now obviously over-ambitious goal of getting 150 million laptops into the hands of kids in two years.

It’s important to note that OLPC has consistently stated that their program is about more than the laptops and is also focused on education. On their website, they emphasize, “OLPC is not, at heart, a technology program, nor is the XO a product in any conventional sense of the world. OLPC is a nonprofit organization providing a means to an end—an end that sees children in even the most remote regions of the globe being given the opportunity to tap in to their own potential, to be exposed to a whole world of ideas, and to contribute to a more productive and saner world community” (“OLPC: Mission”). Considering that Kraemer, Dedrick and Sharma reference this quote in their article (68), which means it hasn’t changed since at least 2009 and likely since the first launch in 2005, this is an idea that they’re attempting to embrace without necessarily having the means to do so.

There is an explicit education philosophy—constructionism, which encourages kid to “think about thinking” and have tangible experiences (Robertson 2018)—behind OLPC. I see issues with the implementation of it but don’t want to be overly harsh about it as a concept—after all, I absolutely believe it has a place in classrooms and Seymour Papert, the original mind behind it, studied with Piaget and was openly praised by him (“Seymour Papert”), which is pretty amazing. The main issues with constructionism from my perspective, especially as it applies to the distribution of the OLPC laptops, are twofold: 1. Many teachers in a variety of different educational systems are highly limited in how they’re able to teach and 2. As an educational philosophy, it arguably requires the students involved to have some. . .instruction. Very few, if any, educational practices are studied without being properly implemented by an educator.

This isn’t to say that OLPC doesn’t involve educators in implementing their programs. This is to say that they didn’t do enough in their implementation to properly prepare teachers for how to use the technology in their classroom, including, for example, not even providing teacher training when they rolled out the program in Libya or contacting the teacher’s union in Peru before they were already starting the program there (Robertson 71). In her presentation, Morgan G. Ames describes the decline of use in Paraguay where she studied for several years due to the fact that OLPC didn’t provide any service or repairs to laptops that were imminently more breakable than they advertised (Ames 2019). OLPC’s ultimate plan was to get laptops to kids. I would argue that this does not function as an education plan or even do more than offer a potential tool without guidance to introduce a constructionist philosophy.  

We can see a hint of how OLPC values teachers by looking back to their charter, which states “building schools, hiring teachers, buying books and equipment [. . .] is a laudable but insufficient response to the problem of bringing true learning possibilities to the vast numbers of children in the developing world” (“OLPC: The Mission”). That really speaks to most of the major issues: if there isn’t basic infrastructure in place—physical schools with working water—and teachers to guide their learning, can students who haven’t been exposed to this kind of technology (or even those who have) truly benefit from it? How do we measure those true learning possibilities? Can we measure them? It might seem overly technical to try to apply statistics to some big, expansive dream but the dreaminess is, in and of itself, the problem.

Just because these issues exist doesn’t mean that we must write OLPC off entirely, though. The bones of the idea are genuinely well-intentioned and they’ve still managed to get a significant amount of technology to kids even if they didn’t meet their stated goals as their original incarnation. As of this October, they’ve given out 3 million laptops (Cameron 2019) and that certainly matters. Regardless of the outcome, sharing those laptops made opportunities that could help kids in developing nations change their lives and open up more possibilities in the future. 

While there is plenty to criticize about the program, many of the fundamentals  are worthy of praise: constructivism is an important educational practice that can unlock critical thinking skills and creativity in a way that many kids don’t have the opportunity to explore. Just the ability to own and hold and use a laptop is empowering and prepares kids for using other technology. And, overall, Negroponte’s philosophies and reasoning are absolutely inspiring. 

He talks about kids becoming “change agents” and allowing them to “connect with the world, think critically and challenge indoctrinations of intolerance” (Ashling 2010). He wants kids to have the whole world open up to them and has a singular vision for doing so which, for better or worse, is a vision worth exploring.

Also, in a vein I hadn’t considered, Jason Johnson argues in his 2010 article “Can a Laptop Change How the World Teaches?” that he observed sixth graders in his one-to-one laptop program educationally benefiting from their laptops outside of the classroom through things like tracking sports statistics, recording skits, and creating address books (72). While he also invokes the need for a teacher to guide students toward productivity, this is another important factor to consider: OLPC laptops have gone to all kinds of kids in all kinds of places and other one-to-one programs have also been gaining popularity throughout the years. Broadly looking at how kids in general use laptops could bring new significance and meaning to these programs.

From articles titled The Laptop That Will Change The World to articles titled OLPC’s $100 Laptop Was Going to Change the World—Then It All Went Wrong, it’s both fascinating and discouraging to watch OLPC’s struggle. As people, we want to believe that we can change the world—that good people stepping up can change the world—but this is an overly simplistic concept in a complicated world. One good idea constructed within one cultural framework and one philosophy of education that by no means represents both the majority of teacher’s experiences or their capabilities within struggling, flawed educational systems isn’t enough.

One laptop can’t change the world.

 With a sustainable plan, though—it’s not a bad start.

Ames, M. G. (2016). Learning consumption: Media, literacy, and the legacy of One Laptop per Child. The Information Society, 32(2), 85–97

Ashling, Jim. (2010). Laptops bridge gap in structured learning. Information Today, 27(5), 22 - 23

Johnson, Jason. (2008). Can a laptop change how the world teaches?. Knowledge Quest. 36(3), 72 - 73

Kraemer, K. L., Dedrick, J., & Sharma, P. (2009). One laptop per child. Communications of the ACM, 52(6)

Lavado, P., Montenegro, G. & Yamada, G. (2016). The effect of one laptop per child on teachers’ pedagogical practices and students’ use of time at home. IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Robertson, A. (2018, April 16). OLPC's $100 laptop was going to change the world - then it all went wrong. Retrieved January 29, 2020, from https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17233946/olpcs-100-laptop-education-where-is-it-now

Seymour Papert. (2007, March). Retrieved January 29, 2020, from https://web.archive.org/web/20150308021353/http://web.media.mit.edu/~papert/

The Hundred Dollar Laptop: Computing for Developing Nations. (2005). Retrieved from https://techtv.mit.edu/videos/16067-the-hundred-dollar-laptop-computing-for-developing-nations

The Life, Death and Legacy of One Laptop Per Child. (2019, March 5). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH13bVUfNuk&t=2s