YouSaid · the spoken record

Vann R. Newkirk II

lines on the record: 72
first: 2021-02-09
most recent: 2021-02-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That are lived on the screen mediated through software that constricts what it is that we can do, you know, whether you're on a Zoom platform or a Microsoft Teams and the software has dictated how you can interact and with how many people you can comfortably interact. And so I don't know. I don't think it's going to go in the direction of freeing us from software. I don't think it's going to go in the direction of a less reliance on technological tools that drive everything that we do.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. I'm done with it. I don't think it'll change much. I think software has a grip on everything that we do that I don't think is going to be undone in this moment. In fact, it's probably going to work its way into more facets of our lives. I think the ways in which probably you, certainly I, and many others saw the evolution of email years ago and how much that bound us to longer times for working and so forth, you know, the productivity of screens, I think we're starting to see that and the encroachment of the screen on our space, on work, on home, on life. There will be companies that say, you know what, I don't think you have to come back into work anymore. That's screen is just fine and it's much cheaper. And so more and more lives.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I think at least one thing that will come out of it is a much more deep reflection of and understanding what screens and mediated contexts are good for and what they're not. I think above all things, I hope we get out of this the very value of face-to-face communication. And again, I think we're finding that it's, you know, maybe not completely necessary for everything, but I think we're starting to see when it's missing and the implications of when we cannot have that kind of contact. And I think to be human is to be together physically to be able to interact and engage and see and engage all of our senses in a way that can't be done on a screen. And so I hope so part of what comes out of this is a renewed commitment to just thinking about what makes us”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is important. I think it's important to have critical masses of those folks across the board of those companies and particularly in leadership. But I don't think that's the solution because you're still within an umbrella that says this is what we do and everything that you do is in the service of what we do. We got to have a lot more people thinking about what it is we do and can do out there. And I think the more we invest in that sort of wide diversity of possibilities, you know, I'm blown away and was blown away in writing black software and looking at the sort of the power and ingenuity of black folks at that particular moment. I work every day with students and you see, you just see the amazing possibilities that are there, the kinds of ideas, the kind of people that come through. And it's like.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, I think in some way there's this disconnect, particularly in the sort of the capitalist landscape where there's supposed to be so much faith in the market not to go look into the actual market to see that there's a whole sense of possibilities out there and ignored them. And I don't know whether it's simple obstinance or risk aversion. But I do think there is a sense that if we're going to have real innovation and not just continue to just sort of replicate the same thing over and over with the new twist, then you got to 180 and completely look and play in a different pool. And so there's always this sort of talk about kind of the representation when we talk about tech companies, as you mentioned, you know, and the number of black and brown folks that are at a Facebook or a Twitter or what have you.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People who are pushing and producing them are different and are liable to bring something very different to the table, we tend to just simply say, look, we know this works. So let me look for that same thing in a very different way, but the same thing over and over and over again. And we tend to have this sense about the same thing, being able to count on it, being reliable, and we miss out on so much that's out there and untapped in the world of black and brown folks who are, you know, who are ready to sort of move into this territory, who do have ideas, who have produced, who do have experience. And, you know, often we simply say, ah, these people don't exist out there. None of us cropped my desk, no one's showed up in my office somehow. But it's because, you know, we haven't looked. And that's really the reason.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And looking at all the talent that's out there in the world and saying, oh, I recognize what could be possible if I see what you're doing and elevate what it is that you're doing in all these different ways, whether that's capital or connections or a wider network and so forth. And so I think it's, to me, it's sometimes I like to pitch it differently than just thinking about sort of the nefarious forces that say we don't want you playing here. And I certainly think that's obviously real in a sense of it. But I think so much more of it is simply our laziness in almost some ways to sort of say, let me do something different. Let me look in a different direction and see if I find different people and ideas worth investing in and backing and pushing because the ideas are great and better because of”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And have great ideas, but what they don't have is the access to those areas of capital and power, the networks that says, all right, for me to go from here to here, I need this, this, and this and be able to know, all right, I get that from this person and get an introduction to that person or have three or four people that can say, oh, I know what you need here. I can make sure you get it from these folks over here. So I think that's where we're losing out because our eyes are always pitched at those who already have access, right? So it's easy for these folks to just say, hey, here's my folks I go to for money, for ideas when someone recognizes what I'm doing. They come to me to ask me to do something else. So that's already there. We don't have too many folks that are looking below.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I do think there's a sense in which people have different starting points. So versus has a starting point that is much higher than your average entrepreneur who has a good idea and maybe even has a good prototype of a product and so forth. And that missing piece is in my mind that connection to a network of contacts, resources, capital, et cetera, that's already embedded for someone who is a celebrity who's already producing in another sphere and transforming something into another. I think that's what we're losing out on because that group of people is small relatively, right? We have a much expansive base when you look at people of color who are entrepreneurs and creators and so forth.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I assume they're being paid handsomely for this franchise that exists now that they can take in all these places, monetize in all these different ways. Why isn't that a more common story, right? Is it just because they already happen to be famous and they already happen to have the business infrastructure and the connects and they, you know, Jay-Z is the guy in charge of culture for the NFL. So they probably just made it like, is it just those are natural built-in advantages? Or is it that systematically we don't want those things to happen, right? Because there are lots of people online who build cool products that have a big audience on the platforms. And the second they try to take them off the platform or monetize directly or sell it again, all kinds of bad things happen.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Give you a small example of like a creator economy story that I think is really interesting. There's versas, which Swiss beats in Timberland, they start in the pandemic just live streams of all of their famous friends talking about their music, playing their music, and it's supposed to be a battle, but it's not really a battle. It's just like a cool hang. And they have leveraged this from like a thing they were doing on Instagram Live all the way to a business that is now going to run the pro bowl for the NFL. My understanding of Swiss beats and Timbollyn.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I think we have to play the game in the spaces that we are able to and gain a foothold there, transform them in the ways that we can. But I think we still have to push for that dream that we've seen unrealized all too often, which is the ability to own, shape, develop something that truly is molded not only in terms of our culture, but in terms of our interest in both the immediate and long-term outcomes that it delivers.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For these things and having great visibility and outcome, I don't know that it's going to exist continuously. I don't know if the owners of the platform are someday going to decide that particular features of the platform are shut down or cut off that then doesn't afford me the same opportunities to gain visibility and engagement in those same ways. I cannot assume that the powers that be, law enforcement, et cetera, won't sort of stake these places out for surveillance in the ways that they have over the last few years. And then essentially turn this into a platform that's really not a place I can go to and count on to do this kind of work that pushes forward the interest of me and my community and all those things.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our own thing, our own way for our own purposes and to our own ends. And I think that's really what's been the missing piece of the puzzle. A question I often get asked is, you know, is it viable to have the next Twitter that is black owned or is minority owned and so forth? Is it viable to have a black Twitter that is a black Twitter? And I think it's an interesting question that I think needs to happen because I think the circumstances and the pitfalls with platforms as they exist, which we've seen so many times, even with something as powerful and impactful as Black Lives Matter, is everything is still contingent, right? A, I'm not sure if this is my place where I'm organizing and pushing.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think we have to do what black folks and people of color and marginalized folks have always done in those situations, which is extract value from what we've been given, number one. We don't own those platforms. We didn't build them, but we can utilize them and we can figure out how to use utilize them, both for our individual sort of pleasure, but also thinking about sort of communal interests and ways that would serve those interests. And I think that's the story you saw playing out with Black Lives Matter and many other instances. So I think we have to do that on the one hand, but at the same time, I think we have to still fight for what we so long have not had, which is that sense of ownership, our ability to build.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then in the 90s, there's a point where you described them as the vanguard, where they actually stand to own the products, where they stand to make a lot of money because they've built communities. They were early. That moment goes away, is the platforms in the broader internet dominates. And that's kind of where we are now. But the other half of your book and your thesis and where you began was, well, there's Black Lives Matter, right? There's the ability for the community to harness the tools and say, look at this injustice. I think maybe for the individual, there's no obvious equitable value there. I'm not getting paid to be outraged. But for the community, there's a massive amount of value that's being generated, a massive amount of attention and potentially political and cultural change. How should we balance that?”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“sure the labor to value exchange there has some equitable something equity built into it and I'm not so sure that that's the case when we look at the large scale financial value that a platform gets out of drawing on our sort of mass labor and what we get as an individual from sort of playing in that sandbox.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We will go on without you. Thank you very much for your service, your labor, everything you provided for us. Sorry you're going, but we'll find people like you elsewhere in the future and continue to make money. So I think we all work for free because we find some value in what the platforms have created, I think if we are to get to someplace where there's not this constant tension about how this plays out on particular platforms and the direction that things take is a mutual recognition and an equitable recognition of, all right, I do things that produce value for the platform. And I also gain value for something that the platform has produced for me, an infrastructure for me to work and play and do all these other kinds of things in. And so some kind of reckoning that makes”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I work for free because in some ways I see some value that trickles back to me. It may not be monetary in nature. I may not be able to calculate it in terms of dollars and cents, but I do see some personal value. That's me. I'm not saying that probably most users see it that way who just sort of go and do their thing because this is a place to do their thing. I think that's the kind of grip. And then what you really need to do if you were to shut something like that down is to flip the switch and say, I'm done. I'm off. I'm not playing the game anymore. And the risks of that are sort of twofold. Number one, I don't get that small sense of value that existed there for me. All right. Where's my audience now? I got to go try to build that on my own or give up having a voice in a way. The second part is Twitter might just say, who the hell cares?”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it's such a hard thing. And, you know, it's hard for me to know whether, you know, this was very specifically a kind of a deliberate forethought sort of plan. But the truth of the matter is that the platforms have done well as creating a sense of value for all of us that now it becomes something that we are so connected to that becomes part of our sort of personal infrastructure, if you will. If I've got something to say, I've got nobody to talk to, particularly at the moment like this. Nobody's going to listen to me.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Work for free a couple times a day, you know, I work for. Way too many times a day. Why is it just we're being seen and that is the value and that's the incentive is there something that can break that cycle where we're all creating value for free? Because that to me is the heart of it, right? Like it can get as inequitable as you want. At the end of the day, I still wake up and I'm like, got to send some tweets for free”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People out on the street. I know them through their Facebook persona or their Twitter handle or what have you. And again, it's just further removed, further possibilities of sort of abstractly thinking about human beings, being disconnected from the humanity of folks who are on those platforms.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or not you actually participated in a crime or not. And so the social media and what plays out there becomes a point of criminality in some ways differently than how you would make sense of things or how you would do police work if most of your work was out on the street embedded in the networks of people that you are. It gives you a different kind of discretion to check yourself, right? There are different things that you know if I'm out on the street and the people I see and how things work, how people have conversation, who interacts with whom, there's a different kind of sensibility that allows my decision making to operate very differently than if I'm removed from those people and now there's distance and I don't know these.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fun. I'm not policing myself in terms of who I'm talking to. And so the same things might play out in that space as may play out if I were out on the street, but simply as an ordinary way of doing life. But then I've got cops then coming into this space and saying, I'm here to find people who have broken the law, may have broken the law in some way, and enforces a surveillance lens around that and enforcement lens around that, then all of a sudden everyone becomes in some way a suspect at the moment there's a precipitating problem. And all of a sudden that innocent thing I said that probably sounds crass or crude, maybe even violent becomes evidence for me to use in a criminal investigation against you.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, they are, but they may be as private citizens. But again, when the question becomes, am I using this platform as a place of this is where I live, this is where I play, et cetera. The moment it becomes, this is where I do my work of policing and crime. And so therefore there's a problem motive that permeates my engagement with that space. And now I'm seeing everything as, you know, basically potential suspects. And this is what has happened with the encroachment of police and policing into the platform arena where, you know, the disconnect is between folks who are there saying, look, I'm just living life and I'm doing things that give me enjoyment or having.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I mean, it's that technology produces the distance. And, you know, just thinking about the things that you can deduce from being out on a street corner versus staring at a screen with a variety of streams of data that tell you what's purporting to be going on on that same street corner, right?”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have something to say, and people are into it that you can be found, and that is, or a remarkable quality of the modern platforms, regardless of all their other ails. On the flip side, you're saying the police are getting more and more dehumanized from the communities they serve because of technology. That seems like a really core tension to the modern era.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me put that idea into tension with what we were talking about with communities online. One of the good things about platforms like Twitter and Facebook and TikTok and YouTube is that black people are just more visible. They're able to communicate more broadly. They're less gatekeepers, fewer intermediaries. Black culture is just quickly becomes the dominant culture. That is very human. That's very humanizing, right? We're just able to see each other more no matter what community you're in.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the fact of the matter is, I think if you ask a lot of police officers to go in and explain to you the technologies they rely on, many of them won't be able to tell you or explain to you how those technologies work. It's a simple, I push some buttons, it gives me a suspect. My job is easier. I go and do what I've got to do. Many of the disparate outcomes that make these things so controversial and unjust, I think come a lot from just that simple over-reliance on a technology and a technological solution for problems that are much more complex.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That. I do a perfectly good job knowing who it is I see out on the street, the relationships I have with people, the connections that I have, and sure, I may still do certain things wrong. I still may have certain prejudices that lead to different kinds of outcomes. But you know what? I don't need your technology. And to see that story flip from that point up to now where the predilection is to say, this database is more effective in telling me whether this individual person or this set of people are likely to have committed this crime than my own good sense or my own skills as a police officer being part of a community and being able to put two together.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fulfilling prophecy that then gets mired into and really directs police use of computing systems, number one. But the other is this over-reliance on the technology and the belief that just because it's a technological solution it is better. A colleague of mine named Meredith Brissard coined this term she calls techno-chauvinism and it's really about that. The idea that technology, a technological system is in and of itself useful importance and has value. But I always go back to that same moment in 64, 65, 66 and so forth where if you went into a police station and said, hey, we've got this new technological tool, you are more likely to not to have officers say to hell with that. I don't need.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The service of safety, ideally in the service of justice, and we know how complicated that is, right? So just imagine a world where we're not even thinking about technology and just thinking about policing and policing where you have two ideals, safety and justice, right, and good people who are enrolls that they're in to do good things. And that is keep people safe, do so in a just way, meaning this there's no disparate impact on certain people more than others. We're not targeting certain people more than others. We're trying to keep people safe generally across the board equally. And then, of course, we can't extract then those two things that I think have, again, over a long arc of time become conjoined. Number one, that black and brown folks are overly represented as criminals, and so it becomes a self-fulfilled.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, I think one of the things that goes wrong often, and I think, you know, maybe even peculiarly in criminal justice and in policing is, you know, there's a recognition that this is hard, right? Policing is hard. The stakes are high. But then there is this jump to what seems to be an easy solution. And I think the connection and the idea and the sort of dream that the technology is always more efficient and easier and allows us to do our jobs better in terms of police has somehow become ingrained in that thought to where it's the technology that drives this story and not policing per se or not policing that says, look, everything that we want to do is done”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They found some crimes, and on and on we go. The hard question there, and I've really struggled with this, is we do want the cops to be effective. And the cops want computers, and they say the computers are what's going to help them be more effective and more targeted and maybe make better use of limited resources. There's a natural argument here, right? Like, I want to do a better job at my homework. Mom buy me a computer so I can do my homework better. But you can extend that to. I want to be more productive at my job. Automation and computing technology can help me be more productive and more accurate. What is it about the police so specifically where it's just that feedback loop? What breaks that feedback loop?”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is the full fruition of an impulse that starts in the early mid 60s to say, how do we identify and visualize and locate people who are predisposed to commit crime? And then how do we mobilize police resources to thwart them? And so that then, I think, has prepared or framed the evolution of policing technology ever since. And I think what has persisted during that whole arc as well, of course, is the position and framing and prejudices around black and brown people as a perpetual source of crime and criminality.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Able to predict and therefore solve a problem because you're able to predict the causes and antecedents of that chrono behavior. And so facial recognition as a fruition of an initial impulse that was really just about tracking people. And of course in 1968, what we had was a physical description that is part of these systems, right? what your race is, what your color, your eyes, your hair, skin, et cetera, are as great detail as possible. And so facial recognition becomes another layer that is even better than having a description of someone. Now I have the image of that person along with a description to match. And so that's why I say in many ways that facial recognition technology”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, facial recognition has been an outgrowth of that. And the facial recognition has been an outgrowth of the ability and desire to profile criminal suspects, right? So this has everything to do with quote unquote prevention of crime as it was framed in 1965 as much as it is now, right? How do we prevent crime? Well, we try to understand who's most likely to commit those crimes and where and what they look like and what their MO is. And so the more data we have to tell us and give us a profile of that person, the more we can use police resources, whether that's manpower or technological powers to identify police and then constrain that. And so I think that impulse to be.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“the problem as it looked then. And I think what has persisted is that problem has not changed or our framing of that problem has not changed. And so from the 60s, 70s, 80s up to our current point, we still frame the problem of crime and criminality in terms of black.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely, absolutely. So those moments where at the height of the civil rights movement, you're also beginning this crest of computing technology development and the widespread thinking about the future of computing. What is this going to mean for us now and in the future? And so it's always hit me that that was a moment where there was a decision point, right? Here we have this great power that comes with computing. We could have very well said, you know, how could we use the power of computing to help spearhead economic equality at a moment in time when that was clearly a thing of great concern. But our minds went to what our preeminent problem was at that time, which had everything to do with race. It had everything to do with blackness of black communities. And then we built our computing systems to fit.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was unlike today where everybody's sort of running from and your tech companies and so forth to like save me from the bad PR of the impact this is having on these communities being in a moment of time and history where everybody was very clear and explicit that we have a threat, that threat is in our urban areas. It's black people who are black, brown, generally poor, and they are protesting in the streets. They are fighting. We see them as the face of crime and violent behavior. We need to use our technological powers to curtail their ability to swart the nation's order, economic order, racial order, power, etc. So to see that realization very explicitly powering the first uses of our computational systems, I think.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that is in terms of the relationship between NYPD and IBM. But more broadly for me, that arc signals something for me, which was a realization that for all the conversation that we're having right now about the devastation of surveillance technologies and others utilized in criminal justice, that this is not a new question and that we have been here for a very long time. And that to me said two things. Number one, it should give us pause and which to me should give us pause is that that origin story, that origin story of computing technology where the first uses of the computer was to essentially devastate black people and black communities. And the realization that that”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I, you know, I think about this often, and my mind goes back to, I forget what the outlet was. It might have been pro public. It may have been some different source. But about two years ago, who broke this story about the NYPD sharing its video surveillance system with IBM and IBM's purpose, was trying to build an AI system to power its facial recognition and identify criminal suspects based on the color of their skin. And I remember reading that report. And the bombshell was, A, this is happening. And then the second one was, you know, this has been under wraps for five years at NYPD and IBM have been colluding to do this. And I remember just having a chuckle and thinking, wow, you guys really missed it. This was not a five-year arc. It was a 50-year one in very specific detail.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're back. Professor McAwain, a big part of black software focused on police software and where it started, where it came from, the networks that the police were using in the 70s and 80s. That obviously ladders right into the current moment. There's, I think, a national reckoning about surveillance and facial recognition that's taking place. We're seeing it with capital protesters who didn't realize. Deeply they were being surveilled or didn't realize that their videos in parlor were able to be scraped. Give me a sense of that arc because I don't think enough people have looked into the past to figure out what we've already done with computers and policing in order to determine what we should do in the future.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I think a lot of it really for me comes back to this sense of value, right? So I still don't think that the platforms have figured out a way to say we recognize and identify the ways in which black culture production”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A course correction, in a sense, that we know how markets are built, we know how capital is built in terms of who powers it in terms of labor and so forth and who generally stands to benefit. And I think that pattern then sort of kind of corrected and played itself out as the internet expanded, expanded in terms of users, expanded in terms of the types of commercial enterprises that began to connect. And I think it simply became much easier to say we can do this, essentially exploit black labor and production and profit in the ways that we've always have. That was the easy thing to do. The harder thing to do, which would have taken much more thought, deliberation, and effort was how do we maintain this? And I think that's simply the question that apparently too few people ask themselves.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Black culture. So that first investment made sense when you had that configuration of investors, markets, et cetera, at that moment in time. I do think that part of what happened as the 90s sort of came to a close. What also started to happen is that the internet starts to open up. And we start to get a little bit more traction on the commercial potential and possibilities for this new thing. And my sense is simply that the sense of an existing market that would include and revolve around black cultural products and producers evaporated when you start to see black folks being a much more of a minority part of that growing internet market. So I think part of it was just a, you know, in part, I kind of”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think in part, that's a critical recognition. There was something about that moment, and I do think that there was something about being able to see in that moment the value of black cultural products as a sort of leader for this new wave of what this thing called the internet would become. And for someone like Ted to recognize folks like David Ellington and Malcolm Cassell and the team that built Net Noir and the things that came after, I think was a recognition of if we want to jumpstart this, here's a market that we know is solid and that's there. And we know the value of Black culture. And I think that was the sort of key recognition from Ted when responding to folks like David who say, look, we all know this. We know the world loves.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think that is because from the jump, the opportunities look the same, right? Here's some money, build some community on this dominant networked platform. He was obviously trying to do it. He saw the opportunity. And that didn't leverage itself into the next thing.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the stories in your book is about the early days of AOL and an executive at AOL who's actually sort of like a minor player in the story of the Verge, like off to the side, Ted Liensis, who's a major executive AOL. And he says AOL is going to be built on communities and he goes and spends money on a bunch of black entrepreneurs to build communities to integrate with AOL. Much later, the CEO of Vox Media, Jim Bankoff, my boss, was a mentored by Ted Leonces, right? And so I can see it. Okay, here's somebody who believed in communities. He mentored this guy. And now I worked at the company that guy runs. What I don't see on the flip side is that other group of executives, I'm not ascribing anything to Ted. I think this is a structural problem. The other group of executives who were given the money, who were given the opportunity, they haven't started the next chain of businesses or platforms or internet companies. I'm wondering why.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Etc. And so that's the story that I think remains flat, that everywhere, as you mentioned, you see black culture. You see the celebration of that culture. You see the ways in which Black culture powers social media platforms and everything else. But I don't think we've found the way to create real value in a sense of or a means by which black folks largely stand to benefit from the profits of that. And, you know, I go back and forth to whether I'm optimistic or pessimistic about whether that'll ever happen. All I know is that it takes and will take an outsized level of capital and investment to make sure that that happens. And I'm a little wait and see to. See if that actually materializes.”
2021-02-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Black Software author on technology’s role in racial justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT