Magazine: Winter 2017 | Volume 24, No. 2
There's a myth in tech culture: A myth that technology can solve any problem, bridge any gap, and create something out of nothing. And, supposedly, it has no political allegiance or agenda. However, the ways we relate to each other and to ourselves are constrained by our environments—our peers, our culture, and artifacts in the world. Because of this, it's indisputable that technology impacts intimacy, identity, and relationships. This issue explores that deeply, with the understanding that these impacts are determined by patterns of power and dominance. In other words, systemic racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and other oppressions operate at all levels of our society, empowering some individuals over others. Technology can be a vehicle to perpetuate these harms, as well as a tool for resistance. It can create opportunities as well as deny them. It is undeniably political.
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COLUMN: Advice
The excessive power of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V in CS research and career development
By Nisha Panwar, Shantanu Sharma
DEPARTMENT: Blogs
Interfacing an FPGA with an external circuit and applications
By Alexander DeForge
SECTION: Features
Can we build the cyborg future we all deserve?
Knowing who we represent in HCI helps us understand what is at stake. Intersectionality can help us do better.
By Ari Schlesinger
Digital and physical barriers to changing identities
Social media sites often erect barriers to changing identities online, which can be similar to physical world barriers faced by marginalized groups. How can social media be designed to enable rather than constrain life changes?
By Oliver L. Haimson
Disability-disclosure preferences and practices in online dating communities
Based on a cooperative research project, this article explores the experience of dating online with a disability, contextualized with an overview of the historical connection between disability and asexuality. It concludes with ideas for decoupling this inaccurate association through online dating platforms.
By Cynthia L. Bennett
Leveraging personal experience for academic research and outreach
Use your individuality to build your career path whether it leans toward academia, outreach, or both. The existing underlying threads between your experiences and the pursuit of research problems might surprise you.
By Joslenne Peña
Gender and the art of community relations
Aspects of one's personal identity can change the way you experience being part of a community, especially if you are in a minority group. The author reports on her experiences of conducting research with women who participate in the Debian Linux project.
By Lesley Mitchell
Reflecting on robots, love, and poetry
Finding the poetry in programming and the algorithms in poems
By Margaret Rhee
OPEN ACCESS
"We had tough times, but we've sort of sewn our way through it: the partnership quilt
Using capacitive touch sensors and traditional quilting techniques lead to the collision of seemingly disparate worlds and resulted in the creation of the Partnership Quilt, a living archive of voices in the shape of an interactive piece of craftwork.
By Angelika Strohmayer, Janis Meissner
SECTION: Profile
Sara Mauskopf
Innovative thinking in the service of parents
Sara Mauskopf lives in Silicon Valley, and is the CEO and co-founder of Winnie, an app with the mission to make parents' lives easier through technology.
By Adrian Scoică
DEPARTMENT: Labz
Social and psychological questions about humans and technology
The Stanford Social Media Lab
By David M. Markowitz
DEPARTMENT: Back
Equality through digital technology
Dedicated to Alan Mathison Turing (1912--1954), a pioneer of computer science
By Vasileios Kalantzis
DEPARTMENT: Hello world
Identifying hate speech in social media
By Alexandra Schofield, Thomas Davidson