KMDI-Semaphore Speaker Series – Matt Ratto

Matt Ratto:

Hopeful Monsters: “Can You Imagine The Pleasure Of Producing One Fact?”

Abstract:

An increasing awareness of the potential biases and problematic social impacts of digital technologies is driving a renewed focus on social responsibility and ethical considerations within the fields of math and computer science. Similarly, a renewed sense of complicity in our socio-technical environments has encouraged humanities and social science scholars to engage more directly in public-facing technical work, often through prototyping, exhibition, and hands-on events. In this talk, I will provide some background on the continuing divide between technical and social disciplines and highlight some of the new opportunities that exist to bridge across this. Specifically, I will describe the importance of ‘hopeful monsters’, a term that has been used by feminist STS scholars to describe socio-technical things that do not quite fit in the world as it stands.

About Our Speaker: 

Dr. Matt Ratto is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto and the BUL Chair in Human-Computing Interaction. His research focuses on how theories and perspectives from technoscience research can usefully extend and contextualize design and engineering practice, particularly related to emerging digital technologies.