Equipped with sensors, radar and cameras, computers have started to ‘see’ the world around them, and drive through it. They make sense of the world around them. They know how to find their way and can spot you standing behind them. They identify dangerous situations, inform you about the coffee being ready or warn you that someone is breaking into your house. But they may also mistake a baby playing with a toothbrush for a young boy holding a baseball bat. They have been unable to recognise black persons. And they may kill a driver by failing to distinguish a white truck against a bright summer sky. Machine learning has allowed computer to identify information they ‘see’ mostly correctly, they still don’t see the world as we do. What is it that they see? From auto-focus, to the ability to identify an object, and to finally self-drive a car, Mercedes Bunz will introduce the digital skill of seeing and its political implications. Besides surveillance, a very new and urgent question emerges on the horizon: Whose reality is recognized by our digital devices? And whose reality gets ignored?

Mercedes Bunz is Senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster, London. Her research explores digital media and the transformation of journalism, social media and the transformation of the public sphere, the internet of things, political economy of media and communication, critical theory and last but not least philosophy of technology. Her last book is The Silent Revolution: How Algorithms Changed Knowledge, Work, Journalism, and Politics Without Making Too Much Noise (2014). Mercedes has been the technology reporter of The Guardian, online editor-in-chief of the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, editor-in-chief of Berlin’s city magazine zitty, and co-founder and editor-in-chief of the techno magazine DE:BUG – magazine for electronic aspects of life.

https://mercedesbunz.net