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Computing Within LIMITS 2023, call for papers

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LIMITS in Computing

Last year I attended the LIMITS 2022, posting about the experience here.  The organizers have just published the following call for papers for the 2023 workshop:

The LIMITS workshop concerns the role of computing in human societies situated in a world of limits*. This interdisciplinary group of researchers, practitioners and scholars seek to reshape the computing research agenda, grounded by an awareness that contemporary computing research is intertwined with ecological limits in general, and climate- and climate justice-related limits in particular. LIMITS 2023 solicits submissions that move us closer towards computing that support diverse human and non-human lifeforms and thriving biospheres.

* For example, limits of extractive logics, limits to a biosphere’s ability to recover, limits to our knowledge, or limits to technological “solutions”.

Call For Papers

We welcome scholarship by researchers, engineers, designers, and artists who are investigating and/or (re)designing computing systems that engage with pressing ecological and social issues. We also invite works that build on previous LIMITS work, such as provocations from earlier LIMITS gatherings (e.g., Unplanned Obsolescence, LIMITS 2017), that broadens the understanding of LIMITS (e.g., Age of Consequences, LIMITS 2015), that explores our own limits (e.g., Computing within Psychological Limits, LIMITS 2015), that explores strategies for working in a LIMITed world (e.g., Limits-aware computing, LIMITS 2015), or that design and/or build transitional systems (e.g., Solar-powered website, LIMITS 2021). Transitional systems attempt to (re) design, implement, and/or evaluate a real-world or hypothetical socio-technical computing system in response to “implications for design” raised by earlier LIMITS papers or LIMITS-related scholarship in the areas of computing and sustainability, computing and climate-justice.

We also encourage authors to consider the stories they tell and reify through their work. As Costanza-Chock reminds us, “Stories have power”. They ask us to consider, “(…) what stories are told about design problems, solutions, contexts, and outcomes? Who gets to tell these stories? Who participates, who benefits, and who is harmed?” (Costanza-Chock 2020 p. 134)

Key Dates

Abstract registration deadline: March 17, 2023, 11:59pm AOE
Paper submission deadline: March 31, 2023, 11:59pm AOE
Paper reviews available: April 28, 2023
Camera ready deadline: May 19, 2023
LIMITS Workshop: June 14-15, 2023

In 2023, LIMITS will be a virtual, distributed workshop. We welcome participants to organize local gatherings or “LIMITS-hubs” that encourage community-building and sharing of infrastructure.

Reach out to Elina (elina(at)kth.se) if interested. I will be there.

The Arduous Road to Revolution. Resisting Authoritarian Regimes in The Digital Communication Age

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I have just read The Arduous Road to Revolution. Resisting Authoritarian Regimes in The Digital Communication Age, the latest book from Gabriele Giacomini. The book  offers an analysis of the influence of ICT use during revolutions (based on revolutions against regimes in Myanmar, Ukraine, Iran, Egypt, Hong Kong and Belarus), and goes on to raise a series of questions about which skills, rules and institutions might be useful to a population that finds its freedom under pressure, and to offer several suggestions.

In the early 21st century academic theorists  about internet development believed that it would bring improvement for democratic processes, offering benefits for bottom-up citizen participation in democratic processes and the resulting empowerment of the population. This view was constructed within a liberal democratic context and framework though, and overlooked questions of how internet and digital technology might become a player within an authoritarian context, which turns out to be quite different.

The author describes the history of the codification of human rights and the philosophy behind the idea that a population has a right to overthrow a government that doesn’t uphold them, before discussing some of the elements that have to be in place for anger to tip over into revolution.

He then goes on to describe the role of digital media in authoritarian restorations under the title The Decline of Revolutions, and offers descriptions of ICT use in the uprisings named above both by the population and the resisting government.

Each example has interesting specifics: the Ukraine experience led to authoritarian regimes realizing the importance of controlling digital media; the Iranian experience to the adoption of technological policies to counteract rebellion, a development also visible in Egypt and the revolutions that followed. Hong Kong and Belarus are viewed as advanced digital societies and the analysis brings in the technological development of exchanging messages while offline (via Bluetooth) and the doxing approach adopted (first) by protesters (described as forms of revolutionary innovation) and the respondent technology-enhanced government repression.

This type of conflict leads to a spiral of digital sophistication (my ICT use is more efficient and bigger and better than yours), and the author makes a case for regulatory prevention, the challenge being to identify the conditions to counter authoritarian drifts in digital societies: to identify control mechanisms, counterweights, and to allow citizens to act before the spiral (described above) starts.

The book comes to a climax with ideas of how to counter authoritarian drifts in digital societies. What is needed (according to Giacomini) is a political architecture that can foster the promotion of the emancipatory elements of digital media, requiring a modern up-to-date human rights system capable of protecting freedom in handling the cognitive elements conveyed by technologies: words, symbols, images, video, data and news.

A thorough description follows of what this might actually mean, rights to freedom, access, anonymity and to be forgotten just a few of those discussed both in terms of application and reinterpretation. The author also makes the point that being free from oppression is not the same as being free to monitor, criticize and denounce, debate and gather.

Should the international community intervene? Should there be regulation? How can we work towards the separation of digital power and strengthening of pluralism at national level. Digital literacy is also a tool for resistance, knowledge of anonymous browsing techniques, avoiding trojans, encryption and even password choice all playing a part in enabling the user to inhibit the influence of power.

This is an easy to read, thought provoking, well researched and informative book that weaves an argument within a grey area sitting between the virtual and physical world. It is not only about digital communication, but also about power and democracy, responsibility, innovation and politics.

The Arduous Road to Revolution. Resisting Authoritarian Regimes in the Digital Communication Age by Gabriele Giacomini is published by Mimesis International and costs €11.

Responsible Computing Research Report

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A Consensus Study Report

Earlier this year (2022) The committee on Responsible Computing Research of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in the USA published a Consensus Study Report entitled Fostering Responsible Computing Research, Foundations and

The Committee members predominantly came from US universities (with one representative from Australia), but also included representatives from Microsoft, Google and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It is a 100 page document, but the following conclusions and recommendations are all to be found in the summary.

Conclusions

The process led to the committee coming to three conclusions that underpin the report recommendations:  

Conclusion 1. To be responsible, computing research needs to expand to include consideration of ethical and societal impact concerns and determination of effective ways to address them.

Conclusion 2. To be responsible, computing research needs to engage the full spectrum of stakeholders and deploy rigorous methodologies and frameworks that have proven effective for identifying the complicated social dynamics that are relevant to these ethical and societal impact concerns.

Conclusion 3. For computing technologies to be used responsibly, governments need to establish policies and regulations to protect against adverse ethical and societal impacts. Computing researchers can assist by revealing limitations of their research results and identifying possible adverse impacts and needs for government intervention.

Recommendations

Recommendation 1. The computing research community should reshape the ways computing research is formulated and undertaken to ensure that ethical and societal consequences are considered and addressed appropriately from the start.

Recommendation 2. The computing research community should initiate projects that foster responsible computing research, including research that leads to societal benefits and ethical societal impact and research that helps avoid or mitigate negative outcomes and harms. Both research sponsors and research institutions should encourage and support the pursuit of such projects.

Recommendation 3. Universities, scientific and professional societies, and research and education sponsors should support the development of the expertise needed to integrate social and behavioral science and ethical thinking into computing research.

Recommendation 4. Computing research organizations—working with scientific and professional societies and research sponsors—should ensure that their computing faculty, students, and research staff have access to scholars with the expertise to advise them in examining potential ethical and societal implications of proposed and ongoing research activities, including ways to engage relevant groups of stakeholders. Computing researchers should seek out such advice.

Recommendation 5. Sponsors of computing research should require that ethical and societal considerations be interwoven into research proposals, evaluated in proposal review, and included in project reports.

Recommendation 6. Scientific and professional societies and other publishers of computing research should take steps to ensure that ethical and societal considerations are appropriately addressed in publications. The computing research community should likewise take steps to ensure that these considerations are appropriately addressed in the public release of artifacts.

Recommendation 7. Computing researchers who are involved in the development or deployment of systems should adhere to established best practices in the computing community for system design, oversight, and monitoring.

Recommendation 8. Research sponsors, research institutions, and scientific and professional societies should encourage computing researchers to engage with the public and with the public interest and support them in doing so.

All of which makes perfect sense, so why not take a look at the report yourself? There is lots of stuff about bias in data sets and other issues that we have addressed previously and It’s free to download here.

And take a look at what Mozilla have been doing here.