In this conversation, Drs. Anna Lauren Hoffmann and Nathan Good discuss the current landscape of data science and ethics, with a particular focus on discourse, power, and inclusion. They begin by pushing back on certain “truisms” of the Big Data age - such as “privacy is dead” and data-intensive research as marking “the end of theory” - to explore the ways in which data scientists and information professionals are already engaged in ethical decision making processes, both explicitly and implicitly. From there, they discuss the limits and possibilities of data science for the liberation of marginalized populations, covering both practical and conceptual concerns. Finally, Drs. Hoffmann and Good will open up the conversation to the audience to address new and emergent ethical, practical, and social concerns on data science’s horizons.
Privacy is Dead, The End of Theory, and Other Things People Shout On the Internet: A Conversation About Ethics, Power, and Data Science
Anna Lauren Hoffmann is a trans woman and scholar working at the intersections of information, technology, culture, and ethics. Her research considers the ways in which the design and use of information technology can promote or hinder the pursuit of social justice. In addition, she employs discourse analysis to explore the values and biases that underwrite understandings of technology, privacy, and ethics as promoted by various stakeholders. Her work has appeared in various scholarly journals, as well as mainstream and independent popular publications, including (most recently) the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Dr. Nathan Good is Principal of Good Research and is on the faculty of the Master of Information and Data Science program at the UC Berkeley School of Information.
A fundamental goal of his work is create devices and services that are simple, secure and respectful of people's privacy. He is a co-author of the UC Berkeley web privacy census, and contributing author to books on privacy and the user experience of security systems. He has published extensively on user experience studies, privacy, and security-related topics and holds patents on software technology for multimedia systems and event analysis.
Prior to Good Research, Nathan was at PARC, Yahoo, and HP research labs. At Berkeley, he worked with TRUST and was a member of the 2007 California SOS Top-to-Bottom Review of Electronic Voting Systems. His research has been reported on in the Economist,New York Times, CNN and ABC and he has testified on his research before Congress and the FTC. Nathan holds a Ph.D. from the UC Berkeley School of Information as well as an MS in computer science from UC Berkeley. He also was a member of LifeLock's Fraud Advisory Board.