tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8598632239789292402024-03-13T10:38:31.066-07:00The 3L Mantra to live by!A mashup of Labor, Leisure & LearningPayal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.comBlogger199125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-1661688789745576722020-03-05T05:29:00.002-08:002020-03-05T13:13:28.590-08:00My Next Billion Users book wins the 2019 PROSE Award: Business Category<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "fira sans" , "ubuntu" , "oxygen" , "oxygen sans" , "cantarell" , "droid sans" , "apple color emoji" , "segoe ui emoji" , "segoe ui symbol" , "lucida grande" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Got fantastic news that my </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "fira sans" , "ubuntu" , "oxygen" , "oxygen sans" , "cantarell" , "droid sans" , "apple color emoji" , "segoe ui emoji" , "segoe ui symbol" , "lucida grande" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">'<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674983786" target="_blank">Next Billion Users</a>' book by Harvard Press has won the <a href="https://publishers.org/news/association-of-american-publishers-announces-subject-category-winners-of-2020-prose-awards/" target="_blank">PROSE Award</a> under the <i>Business, Management, Finance category</i>. </span><span style="font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "fira sans" , "ubuntu" , "oxygen" , "oxygen sans" , "cantarell" , "droid sans" , "apple color emoji" , "segoe ui emoji" , "segoe ui symbol" , "lucida grande" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The <b>Association of American Publishers </b>(AAP) unveiled their Subject Category Winners for the 2020 PROSE Awards honoring the best scholarly works published in 2019. These winners were selected by a panel of 19 judges from the 157 finalists previously identified from the more than 630 entries in this year’s PROSE Awards competition. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "fira sans" , "ubuntu" , "oxygen" , "oxygen sans" , "cantarell" , "droid sans" , "apple color emoji" , "segoe ui emoji" , "segoe ui symbol" , "lucida grande" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">What is particularly exciting is to see how <b>digital anthropology</b> on a population that has long been ignored by the market and the state is finally of interest to a broader audience and more importantly, the business and tech sector who is now taking notice of this <b>next billion demographic as legitimate consumers. </b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "fira sans" , "ubuntu" , "oxygen" , "oxygen sans" , "cantarell" , "droid sans" , "apple color emoji" , "segoe ui emoji" , "segoe ui symbol" , "lucida grande" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "fira sans" , "ubuntu" , "oxygen" , "oxygen sans" , "cantarell" , "droid sans" , "apple color emoji" , "segoe ui emoji" , "segoe ui symbol" , "lucida grande" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">While there is <b>concern of hyper commodification </b>of the next billion market, my book actually challenges that blanket and passive approach. Instead, it reframes this engagement and builds nuance and incentive for tech and businesses at large to broaden their ways of understanding and meaningfully catering to the next billion user market which will expand their choices, keep them safe and <b>optimize for civility, trust and pleasure instead of just profit and efficiency. </b></span><br />
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-2616473029024460402020-02-15T01:37:00.000-08:002020-02-15T01:37:14.922-08:00Keynote at the ITStrategy Hamburg Summit<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Had a fascinating experience at the <a href="https://www.it-strategietage.de/" target="_blank">IT Strategy Days Summit</a> that was held on the 12-14 February at the Grand Elysse in Hamburg. Some of the most influential IT and business CEOs, CIOs, and other experts and policy makers from Germany came together to tackle key formidable challenges in their business. You had CEOs/CIOs from Lufthansa, SAP, BMW, Adobe, Siemens and more out there discussing these issues. The buzz terms for the summit was "agility, resilience and innovation" framed as drivers of digital business. </div>
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This year there was much targeted interest in Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, and the digital and global logistics of operations that could help design the most optimal platforms through which innovations can quickly reach the entire organization and ultimately customers. There were 3 main strands of focus: 1) <span style="text-align: center;">Digital Frameworks - Which architectures make IT resilient and agile 2) </span><span style="text-align: center;">Innovation on fire - How companies successfully reinvent themselves 3) </span><span style="text-align: center;">Artificial Intelligence - Why AI and ML do not make you intelligent alone: </span><span style="text-align: center;">All systems down - Which security strategies help to avoid disasters.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: center;"><b>My keynote </b>was focused on designing these digital platforms for a global consumer and that global consumer is a whole new novel consumer base for many of these organizations - they are the next billion users who are fast coming online and radically reconstituting business models and digital platforms. The CIO magazine wrote a critical summary of my talk for those interested (in German) on<a href="https://www.cio.de/a/payal-arora-diversity-darf-kein-hindernis-sein,3627139" target="_blank"> 'Diversity shouldn't be an obstacle'</a></span></div>
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Am really enjoying floating through these different worlds - designers, product managers, business leaders, and media experts. Makes you realize how essential and timely these bridges are in todays complex business world.</div>
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-49894626683372003022020-01-27T05:10:00.000-08:002020-01-27T05:10:29.980-08:00Kick off for 2020 with the India book tour<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LYkBEJQsMFc/Xi7dkpNF1MI/AAAAAAAABFE/S12rXUyxAkwodr5Qmojo4HCl0vrjkN2AACEwYBhgL/s1600/ENsP-RlU8AIt5ea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="729" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LYkBEJQsMFc/Xi7dkpNF1MI/AAAAAAAABFE/S12rXUyxAkwodr5Qmojo4HCl0vrjkN2AACEwYBhgL/s320/ENsP-RlU8AIt5ea.jpg" width="227" /></a>What a way to begin 2020 - full of spice and color and drama! Basically it felt like a year of celebration was starting. I embarked on my book tour in Pune for the <a href="https://www.indiasciencefest.org/about-us" target="_blank">India Science Fest </a>which drew a crowd of about 15,000 people! And what a demographic - from kids with their parents to engineering and philosophy students to elderly folks curious about these topics, they managed to truly create a spirit of democratizing science for the public. This was the brainchild and product of Varun Aggarwal of <a href="https://www.aspiringminds.com/in/" target="_blank">Aspiring Minds</a> . I spoke about designing for the next billion and also was on a panel on the future of science with AI. I headed to Bangalore right after to speak at the <a href="http://citapp.iiitb.ac.in/talk-by-payal-arora-erasmus-university-rotterdam/" target="_blank">IIIT-Bangalore Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy lecture series </a> and gave a Keynote <a href="https://spmsummit.org/indiaspm2020-1" target="_blank">at the IIM-B for the Software Product Management Summit</a> on re-centering the human in design. Was a fascinating conversation as we delved into how product management as a field is changing dramatically and in recent years is putting the user values at the center to create responsible design. After Bangalore, I went for a week to the legendary<a href="https://jaipurliteraturefestival.org/" target="_blank"> Jaipur Literature Festival, </a>the largest such literature festival in the world. Was on multiple panels - Consumer Intelligence, the Art of Innovation and the Next Billion Users. Now this was just an unforgettable experience with the quality of speakers, the energy, the food and color and most importantly the passionate and sizable and young audience that was glued on every word and engaged with the ideas - what a gift for any author! Last but not least, went to Hyderabad to launch the <a href="https://www.idrc.ca/en/article/future-work" target="_blank">IDRC grant</a> with Usha Raman and meet the superb team to brainstorm on the steps ahead for our 3 year project on feminism, laborers and the future of work in the global south.<br />
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-27052190515722169772020-01-06T10:33:00.000-08:002020-01-06T10:35:57.759-08:00The co—matter podcast out on sex, trust, and the next billion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://co-matter.com/work/payal-arora-let-the-next-billion-users-play-games-and-watch-porn" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="680" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IDiQ4b1DNYE/XhN7b-RnDZI/AAAAAAAABEs/tZE_dqT_YIw1Ls2Me1Cyh-8q08rjupEwwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Payal-X-Severin.jpg" width="400" /></a>At the <a href="https://techfestival.co/" target="_blank">Techfestival in Copenhagen</a>, I got to chat with Severin Matusek of the <a href="https://co-matter.com/work/payal-arora-let-the-next-billion-users-play-games-and-watch-porn" target="_blank">Co-Matter Podcast</a> on why Pornhub continues to be a powerful hook for people in the global south to adopt the internet and get hooked on it, when does culture actually matter in the scaling of tech and more. </div>
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-54692200523799392252020-01-01T10:52:00.000-08:002020-01-01T10:52:20.836-08:00Keynote for the Privacy and Identity Conference<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I was invited to give a <b>keynote</b> for the members of the <a href="https://www.pilab.nl/events/conference/index.html" target="_blank">Privacy and Identity Lab</a>, an interesting group of privacy scholars at the Kings Ballroom in the Hague. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">What was particularly fascinating about this group was their cross disciplinary backgrounds as they delved into a spectrum of issues from accountability issues in smart city planning to healthcare data security and regulation to the legal challenges of applying the General Data Protection Laws and the spectrum of interpretations these laws seem to evoke, which brings to question the extent of the efficacy of these laws to reign in poor and unethical market behaviors in the tech arena.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I spoke about the implications of these laws universalizing and its globalizing potential and challenges. The fact is that as technology companies expand their reach
worldwide, the notion of privacy continues to be viewed through a market-based
and ethnocentric lens, disproportionately drawing from empirical evidence of
perceptions and behaviors of Western-based, white, and middle-class
demographics. We need to break away from the market-driven neoliberal ideology
and the Development paradigm long dictating digital media studies in the global
South if we are to foster a global standard for privacy regulation worldwide. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Overall an eye opening experience. </div>
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-39555301732659582582019-11-18T05:07:00.000-08:002019-11-18T05:07:07.233-08:00Keynote at the DesignUp conference on 'Irrational Design'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://designup.io/" target="_blank">DesignUp</a>, a Design-in-Tech conference in Bangalore, brought
together an amazing and forward thinking group of designers, UX researchers,
data scientists, policy makers, business leaders and entrepreneurs together
over the course of 4 days on Nov 12-16. This year, the theme was about
plurality in design. <o:p></o:p>DesignUp is the largest Design & Tech event in Asia (excluding China), labelled by <a href="https://yourstory.com/2018/07/designup-conference-back-3rd-edition" target="_blank">YourStory as the Definitive Design-in-Tech conference </a>and listed by <a href="https://qz.com/1186979/a-list-of-the-best-design-conferences-and-events-of-2018-selected-by-kelli-anderson-khoi-vinh-gere-kavanaugh-michael-sorkin-harry-west-and-other-leading-design-experts/" target="_blank">Quartz.com among the World's 20 most Exciting Design Events. </a></div>
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I gave the <a href="https://designup.io/blr2019/team-member/payal-arora/" target="_blank">keynote</a> on the ‘<b>Next Billion Users and Irrational
Design</b>’ that offered a new template to understanding the user behaviors and
preferences of the next billion. </div>
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After all, the failures of tech –the graveyard of apps -
FB Zero, Secret and such, rests on the premise of negating the role of the
cultures from below. Those at the margins of our imagination who have now
become the norm – the next billion - are
pushing ahead with novel demands on interfacing, design preferences, and
aspirational consumption, demanding in turn that we rethink what we deem as
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Additionally, the panel on '<b>Roti, Kapda, aur Mobile'</b> generated an excellent discussion on data as currency, whether it is enough to design ethical policies and products from the corporate end, the moral panics of creating a new tech monster and more...</div>
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The most memorable part of this whole event was at my <b>book signing</b> where I got to talk one on one with each person who bought the book and find out about them. It is so rare for authors to get this kind of immediate feedback about their readers and being India, it was delivered with a tremendous amount of warmth and affection. Was thrilled to hear that my books were sold out at the event. Makes this writing process really worth it!</div>
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-88422453897284030012019-11-08T01:31:00.000-08:002019-11-08T01:32:18.204-08:00Keynote and panel discussion at Deutsche Welle in Bonn<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qmNc80tH_7U/XcU1cQNwnVI/AAAAAAAABCo/ZYi94XGgD50vGheVJoNLlCWxCqwjWl5aACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/EIxLZnwWsAA_06F.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RsAhZJYEIXQ/XcU1cQ1-9NI/AAAAAAAABCk/5W1-DqHea5YyBjUSOJKTl7U3piuWyoHqgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/EIwk3EIXsAA6jRc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="900" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RsAhZJYEIXQ/XcU1cQ1-9NI/AAAAAAAABCk/5W1-DqHea5YyBjUSOJKTl7U3piuWyoHqgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/EIwk3EIXsAA6jRc.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--y6gVI1p7Mk/XcU1coULewI/AAAAAAAABCs/ijx6rVQkAN4CYmYgyCDJRb0SvfC0hX2_ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/EI1UIe-XkAAldxp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1069" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--y6gVI1p7Mk/XcU1coULewI/AAAAAAAABCs/ijx6rVQkAN4CYmYgyCDJRb0SvfC0hX2_ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/EI1UIe-XkAAldxp.jpg" width="320" /></a>Brilliant experience in the last two days at<a href="https://www.dw.com/en/top-stories/s-9097" target="_blank"> Deutsche Welle (DW)</a> at the <a href="https://fome.info/symposium2019-programme" target="_blank">FOME Symposium</a> organized in Bonn on <b>Rethinking media development - New actors, new technologies and new strategies</b>. I gave my keynote on how the rise of the <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674983786" target="_blank">Next Billion users</a> , low-income users in the global south coming online for the first time, is transforming the media sphere and how we need to center them in our imagination as we proceed to tackle the challenges on how to build a sustainable information ecosystem. Couple of take aways here for the field of journalism and media development when going global with these strategies:<br />
1. Let us not discount <i>SMS and WhatsApp as the prime and often the sole media distribution outlet.</i> WhatsApp and Facebook is the internet to the NBU market. We need to keep that in mind while we write content for the NBU market and how they will experience it on these devices<br />
2. <i>The internet is the poor person's leisure economy </i>- thereby, for getting them interested in the media content, speak to issues that interest them and not just about the usual topics on poverty - the poor are more than their economic status.<br />
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qmNc80tH_7U/XcU1cQNwnVI/AAAAAAAABCo/ZYi94XGgD50vGheVJoNLlCWxCqwjWl5aACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/EIxLZnwWsAA_06F.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="900" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qmNc80tH_7U/XcU1cQNwnVI/AAAAAAAABCo/ZYi94XGgD50vGheVJoNLlCWxCqwjWl5aACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/EIxLZnwWsAA_06F.jpg" width="320" /></a>3. Governments are often the main advertising revenue source for media outlets and Development agencies have specific agendas which are rooted in classic development paradigms of poverty and needs based alleviation strategies. Media outlets due to these constraints tend to write the same kind of narratives and stories which thereby create a <i>tremendous gap between what people want to read and what is written. </i>This explains the rise of non formal media actors and influencers online. We need more than ever a diversity of stories beyond the usual stereotypes and cliches of the NBU<br />
4.<i> Journalists should build their brands</i> as it gives them more freedom to express themselves and be a little more independent from their organizations; this also is a win-win for media outlets as they can safely distance themselves from these opinions and yet allow for their expression under the growing censorship regime<br />
5. <i>Fake news per se does not kill democracy</i> as that would imply that information is a key instrument for decision-making. Not quite so as its more affective and people are willing to let a few lies go for the pursuit of a bigger truth (that they have been neglected by the state, media, etc. and its time they fight back and that the means does justify the ends); moreover membership to a group in this age of lonliness matters more so and thereby we need to build empathy of why people are attending to certain kinds of misinformation and reacting in particular ways and what are the broader reasons that is pushing this kind of disruption.</div>
Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-44674074067765807792019-11-08T00:48:00.000-08:002019-11-08T00:48:36.435-08:00Re-imagining Spotify for the Next Billion Users<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It was fantastic to give a talk at <a href="https://www.spotify.com/de/" target="_blank">Spotify</a> in Stockholm on my book '<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674983786" target="_blank">The Next Billion Users' </a><br />
Am a fan of this company as they really personally transformed my ways of listening and experiencing music.<br />
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It was so gratifying to be able to speak with their team on how to re-conceptualize their platform for a new market to best service them - their listening tastes, behaviors, sharing patterns, curated genres, and more.<br />
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The fact is that their business model as it stands needs some significant rethinking as they move into these new terrains and markets. Am glad to be part of this journey. </div>
Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-66582649105250153222019-11-03T01:24:00.001-07:002019-11-03T01:24:52.847-07:00Keynote at Digital Fortress Europe in Brussels<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I delivered a keynote on 'Amplified activism from afar" in addressing border-making through social media and how diasporas can be powerful forces to contend with in the shaping of national agendas, policies and even grassroots social movements.<br />
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This was for the ECREA organized event called <a href="https://ecrea.eu/event-3235026" target="_blank">"Digital Fortress Europe: Exploring Boundaries between Media, Migration and Technology" </a>held in Brussels end October.<br />
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The two-day conference served as a forum to "reflect on the relations between media, migration, and technology. These relations demand our fullest attention because they touch on the essence of what migration means in societies that are undergoing democratic challenges. Research shows that media and technologies play a vital role for people who migrate, but that the same media and technologies serve to spread xenophobia, increase societal polarization and enable elaborate surveillance possibilities. With its intensifying anti-migration populist discourses, humanitarian border crises and efforts to secure borders through technological solutions, the European context provides a pulsating scene to examine such deepening relations. Taking place in the heart of Europe’s political capital, this conference aims to critically reflect on what the much-debated notion of “Fortress Europe” means in the digital age and how it can guide our future thinking on media and migration. As such, scholars of media, communication, migration and technology will be stimulated to contribute to critical discussions on border politics and migration debates."<br />
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Got great questions on how we can track online social movements and the ethics of inserting ourselves as researchers into these highly sensitive content based forums online. Other questions were about elaborating on who gets representing in these diasporas (as they are not monolithic groups) and how they balance diversity within a group fighting for self-actualization with being united for a singular cause.<br />
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Overall, wonderful forum that brought together academics, policy makers and journalists and artists in search of how to best inform and enable freedoms across board.<br />
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-82453236160309135192019-10-13T04:40:00.002-07:002019-10-13T04:40:42.835-07:00Rockefeller Foundation Workshop on Responsible AI Futures<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9UNMIE_MLUY/XaMJD-d7tNI/AAAAAAAABBs/2ybCzYNt3got1DoB2vKgBZikhUakEJsQQCEwYBhgL/s1600/RockefellerFoundation-8-12%2BOct.%2B2019.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9UNMIE_MLUY/XaMJD-d7tNI/AAAAAAAABBs/2ybCzYNt3got1DoB2vKgBZikhUakEJsQQCEwYBhgL/s400/RockefellerFoundation-8-12%2BOct.%2B2019.JPG" width="400" /></a>The <a href="https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/our-work/bellagio-center/" target="_blank">Rockefeller Foundation</a> has committed itself to shape the design and impact of Artificial Intelligence on Society with a series of workshops and vision documents. The first in its series - <a href="https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/blog/designing-responsible-ai-future/" target="_blank">'Designing a Responsible AI Future'</a> just took place in Bellagio Italy on Oct 9-12 ,2019. I was invited to contribute to this effort alongside technologists, thought leaders, academics, and artists, although admittedly, while diverse in their disciplines and focus, were primarily from the Anglo-Saxon region. </div>
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So the conversation was dominated by United States concerns and issues with an emphasis on decentralization of tech, and focus on the harmful effects of fintech, facial recognition, and other innovations as a means of building a responsible AI. While undoubtedly accountability matters very much so, from a global perspective, the opportunities of AI, and the importance of convergence of diverse platforms into these hyper-ecosystems emerge from the vantage point of scarce resources and thereby to push for efficiency and everyday governance, close relations between the private and the public sector as part of a larger development paradigm and most importantly, to leverage on the motivations of the users and their high enthusiasm for all things tech which is quite the opposite of the typical mindset nowadays among users in the global north.</div>
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Either way, was very informative in mapping these perspectives and understanding these overarching biases in policy and practice in the Global North, particularly among Europeans and Americans.</div>
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-24034085040540015512019-09-25T19:58:00.000-07:002019-09-25T19:58:43.965-07:00Keynote and Fireside chat on AI4Good at NEXT event Hamburg<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The <a href="https://nextconf.eu/" target="_blank">NEXT 19 </a>at Hamburg - what an event! Beautifully curated with the right mix of humor, creativity, seriousness and playfulness - the kind of thoughtful event required for the public to engage with important and timely subjects It was a brilliant move to connect this festival with the <a href="https://www.reeperbahnfestival.com/de/rbfc/partner-events/next19" target="_blank">Reeperbahn Festival</a> which basically mixed the crowd of tech people, creative industry folks -media, design, advertising...<br />
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I had a blast doing my <a href="https://nextconf.eu/2019/09/payal-arora-dispelling-the-myths-about-the-next-billion/" target="_blank">keynote</a> on <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674983786" target="_blank">my book <i>The Next Billion Users. </i></a> The audience really engaged and I am getting really into going back and forth with them during my talks these days. I always get the surprisely reactions of how come I am so optimistic in this time of the doom and gloom of social media killing democracy, our minds, our communities and more and of course, we have been here many times before. We fall in love and we fall out of love with tech - that which we love, we fear, we loathe and then it starts all over again. Like I said at the tail end of my talk - <b><i>you cannot reform that which you do not love. We need to fall back in love with tech. Its like a marriage, not an affair. We are in for the long haul - for better and for worse. </i></b><br />
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Also was cool to gather around for a fireside chat on<a href="https://nextconf.eu/event/ai-for-good/" target="_blank"> AI for Good </a> with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenajaumepalasi/?originalSubdomain=de" target="_blank">Lorena Jaume-Palasí,</a> founder of The Ethical Tech Society, a non-profit organization researching processes of automation and digitization with regards to their social relevance and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/astrid-maier/?originalSubdomain=de" target="_blank">Astrid Maier</a>, chief editor at Xing, who moderated this conversation.<br />
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To top it off, Hamburg is just such a cool city and I stayed in a water tower hotel which was a nice cherry on top. Cool crowd. Cool event.<br />
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-91801627325338293922019-09-01T09:27:00.002-07:002019-09-08T00:42:43.378-07:00Keynote alongside the legendary Jimmy Wales<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Click on the highlights of the <a href="https://techfestival.co/highlights/" target="_blank">Techfestival in Copenhagen on 7-9 September </a>and you will see me positioned next to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales" target="_blank">Jimmy Wales, </a>the legendary founder of Wikipedia. This is such a big highlight of my career. It is such an honor to be situated alongside a person of this caliber - I continue to be in awe of how he managed to resist commercializing Wikipedia and continuing to keep it up as one of the top most loved sites around the world.<br />
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The Techfestival itself was an amazing event with a spectrum of fantastic people and even more amazingly, many with backgrounds in the humanities -literature, philosophy, the arts in general. Their backgrounds explain why this event brought sustained good conversations, thoughtful reflections and creative ideas to the fore which was not tech centric but society centric, about what it means to be meaningful, democratic, social, happy, and connected with one another - basically putting the human over tech in this conversation. I appreciated that very much but it does sadden me that while clearly there is an essential need to bring diverse mindsets together, we face a current day scenario where governments including the Dutch government does not see the relevance of humanities in shaping tech with their <a href="https://www.vsnu.nl/en_GB/news-items/nieuwsbericht/517-vsnu-s-response-to-the-van-rijn-committee-s-advisory-report-perspective-concerning-the-shift-from-allocation-model-to-funding-model-greater-research-freedom-grave-concerns-about-negative-reallocation-effects.html" target="_blank">latest budget cuts especially in the humanities.</a><br />
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I also spoke for the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/fckupnightscph/photos/a.892875470732595/2474263135927146/?type=3&theater" target="_blank">Fuckup Nights</a> which is such a great idea to begin with. It's all about sharing failure stories instead of success as failure has a much more interesting pathway that can bond us together, and humble us in this journey of social change.<br />
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-28532155312996286292019-08-22T21:07:00.002-07:002019-08-22T21:07:34.465-07:00My East Asia book tour<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-72hjHE2IWr4/XV9gvxztcCI/AAAAAAAAA_M/AMkWQ6ZYIeMK0PnVM6-23H-4FuroxH2pwCLcBGAs/s1600/68466024_10157342756730833_7681124142141145088_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-72hjHE2IWr4/XV9gvxztcCI/AAAAAAAAA_M/AMkWQ6ZYIeMK0PnVM6-23H-4FuroxH2pwCLcBGAs/s320/68466024_10157342756730833_7681124142141145088_n.jpg" width="320" /></a>The last two weeks have been thrilling! With my book being translated into Chinese, I got on the road to speak about the<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674983786" target="_blank"> "The Next Billion Users" </a> with academics, development and tech practitioners, activists, and the lay public in Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong and Taipei. The news of the typhoons in China and Taiwan and the ongoing protests in Hong Kong did make me wonder how this would play out, adding a streak of adventure to this whole journey. But not only did everything run smoothly, but people across board were so extraordinarily kind, hospitable and generous with their time and attention that I am determined this is just my beginning with this region.<br />
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The book talks started at the launch of the Innovation lab in <a href="https://www.ntu.edu.sg/Pages/home.aspx" target="_blank">Nanyang Technological University </a>(NTU) in Singapore. The workshop aptly called <a href="https://hal2lam.wixsite.com/innovation" target="_blank">"Interrogating Innovation" </a> brought together speakers from across disciplines and countries and shed light on the obsession with innovation, the implicit normative meanings around this term and the policy and practical implications on tech design and policy:<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_3lYE1ONuTY/XV9gv46_-LI/AAAAAAAAA_I/iyoMuXu22KsKIMN1rVxHeh4hhLg-NBxhwCLcBGAs/s1600/68581142_10157342757020833_7903809348806115328_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="716" data-original-width="960" height="236" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_3lYE1ONuTY/XV9gv46_-LI/AAAAAAAAA_I/iyoMuXu22KsKIMN1rVxHeh4hhLg-NBxhwCLcBGAs/s320/68581142_10157342757020833_7903809348806115328_n.jpg" width="320" /></a>"Although there have been various attempts to define “innovation,” part of its power stems from its polysemic quality. Rather than attempt to add to these definitions, this conference aims to examine what “innovation” does. What work does it do as a discourse or as an ideology? How does it organize and mobilize resources? Who does it include or exclude? How does it shape scientific or engineering practice? How does it shape social and urban relations?"<br />
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I got to see the Innovation zones in <a href="https://www.jtc.gov.sg/industrial-land-and-space/Pages/one-north.aspx" target="_blank">One North </a>and we were very lucky with the timing as there was an open house policy during my stay there. What was interesting is the deep involvement of the state and the university system in this initiative. While media outlets love to perpetuate the lone entrepreneur in the garage tinkering away breakthrough tech, in reality it is and has always been a deeply top down process with the state and the tech empires steering those below to create something novel.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qzCPNYDVPM8/XV9lMvg3LRI/AAAAAAAAA_o/sQFG-a4fLFQa-rBheFc2XIt4E62ggPovACLcBGAs/s1600/EBvOBSWXoAEBAxc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="1024" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qzCPNYDVPM8/XV9lMvg3LRI/AAAAAAAAA_o/sQFG-a4fLFQa-rBheFc2XIt4E62ggPovACLcBGAs/s400/EBvOBSWXoAEBAxc.jpg" width="400" /></a> From there I headed to Macau to talk at the <a href="https://cs.unu.edu/" target="_blank">UN University</a> and hold a <a href="https://twitter.com/UNU_CS/status/1163297774877593600/photo/1" target="_blank">webinar </a>for the public. It was a great experience and the place itself is fascinating. You learn quickly of its 400+ years of Portuguese colonization through the Vasco da Gama park, the Portuguese street signs alongside Chinese characters, pastel de nata stores all over the place. I had no idea that this place is one of the densest in the world, and had a gambling industry 7 times bigger than that of Las Vegas, and that it had overtaken Qatar as one of the <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-keith-b73a6422/" target="_blank">Karen Keith</a> which was a good 20 minutes of conversation on national TV - pretty rare in these days especially given the topic is about digital inequality, technology innovations, globalization and user experiences.<br />
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richest per person income in the world. Got to also talk on Macau TV Teledifusão de Macau with the wonderful TV host <br />
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Took the Ferry to Hong Kong, which was such a magical experience. A few days back, more than a million protesters had taken to the streets. Yet, when I arrived, it was business as usual and there was no trace whatsoever of the ongoing political developments. I was told that HK people clean up very well after them and this normalcy gives them the stamina to see this through longer term.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8PqYjoeWyKI/XV9ltRz1ZWI/AAAAAAAAA_0/ZUtvYleczc0_uMWC1Y2UqQdpH58D9U-4QCLcBGAs/s1600/68370105_506342396780356_5828389483891916800_n%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="781" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8PqYjoeWyKI/XV9ltRz1ZWI/AAAAAAAAA_0/ZUtvYleczc0_uMWC1Y2UqQdpH58D9U-4QCLcBGAs/s200/68370105_506342396780356_5828389483891916800_n%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="97" /></a>What was very rewarding was to give talks in two unconventional book stores. Nose in the Books is a crowdfunded initiative of allowing anyone to access and read some of the most classic and cutting edge books in this very warm and welcoming atmosphere. ACO bookstore is part of a larger art and literature scene which encourages activists, artists and thinkers to get together and take initiative. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who made the time to be there and engage deeply in spite of all their ongoing political unrest.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Qt8xTBNrmU/XV9mNWmObWI/AAAAAAAABAM/CXTJVfMPHhIvSrZBlDN0Df59LRxMW71nwCLcBGAs/s1600/67886443_894392164260680_8973545647651160064_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1132" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Qt8xTBNrmU/XV9mNWmObWI/AAAAAAAABAM/CXTJVfMPHhIvSrZBlDN0Df59LRxMW71nwCLcBGAs/s320/67886443_894392164260680_8973545647651160064_o.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WXpQiU4EqhI/XV9mNd8GJkI/AAAAAAAABAQ/Nc3PRjf7ksc4lxPK1iaKj3IS5l2wiERzACLcBGAs/s1600/DSC_6577.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="732" data-original-width="1098" height="133" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WXpQiU4EqhI/XV9mNd8GJkI/AAAAAAAABAQ/Nc3PRjf7ksc4lxPK1iaKj3IS5l2wiERzACLcBGAs/s200/DSC_6577.JPG" width="200" /></a>And last but not least, I got to give a talk at Taiwan National University (TNU) and was met with a wonderfully engaged and thoughtful group of students and scholars. People asked about solutions to the growing gender inequality online, the ways in which tech can debilitate as well as facilitate empowerment, and what should be done to institute the global mindset of tech infrastructures with the growing nationalist models in tech innovation. As we walked to dinner, I got to see the train tunnel come alive with Taipei people's support for the Hong Kong protests through their personal messages adorned across these walls.<br />
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Overall, this region just filled my heart with so much joy. I fell deeper in love with their food, their cultures, their kindness and humility and am determined this is just the beginning of my journey with these cities. Until next time. </div>
Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-77998798254861381252019-06-29T11:40:00.002-07:002019-06-29T11:40:33.965-07:00Brainstorming at the AI & Democracy CIFAR Workshop at Microsoft Research Montreal <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I was invited to participate in the '<a href="https://events.cifar.ca/ehome/aiecosystems/Overview/?fbclid=IwAR0bCgq1_XLg_2R_3zZhXKHOq3v7EVAij0tXdsPe1p3GyoMtijrJ22YafmY" target="_blank">AI Powered Information Ecosystems & Democracy'</a> workshop held at the <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/lab/microsoft-research-montreal/" target="_blank">Microsoft Research Lab in Montreal</a> and sponsored by <a href="https://www.cifar.ca/ai/ai-society" target="_blank">CIFAR</a>. </span><br />
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The premise of this workshop was to engage a "diverse groups of researchers from academia and industry with practitioners and civil society representatives, to encourage collaborations between those involved in the research and development of computations tools with those with focused expertise in policy, journalism, civil rights, and democratic values."<br />
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The basis of this workshop was to outline all the opportunities and challenges that AI-powered information ecosystems (like social media, search engines, or content-sharing platforms) have brought upon in recent years and in particular to the strengthening of our democratic institutions around the world.<br />
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It was an intense workshop where we worked in core groups on topics such as communities, elections, misinformation, and regulation and when in there, we wrote up proposals that pushed us to outline the problems in each segment, the stakeholders, their roles and responsibilities, creative initiatives, and more. It felt like I was back in school but with some damn smart pupils.<br />
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I learnt a lot and also was confronted by a number of different approaches and worldviews, that is humbling as if we as a collective can recognize ongoing tensions among ourselves in how to approach these issues, then indeed this will take far more than just a workshop. But this is still an amazing start.<br />
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-7271391839475657412019-06-25T08:56:00.002-07:002019-06-26T01:20:59.702-07:00Talking to Tech: Keynote at EMERCE Next in Amsterdam<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Wonderful experience speaking as one of the few academics in a room full of young tech entrepreneurs at the <a href="https://emerce.nl/event/emercenext/" target="_blank">EMERCE Next</a> event in Amsterdam. I gave a talk based on my new book '<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674983786&content=reviews" target="_blank">The Next Billion Users' published by Harvard Press</a> earlier this year. I spoke about the myths that aid agencies and tech industries perpetuate about these new user groups based on their biased understandings of them and rooted in little empirical evidence. Worse yet, even in the face of vast evidence that contradicts these worldviews, this thinking still persists so I hope I was able to disrupt a little bit these conventional approaches. I got questions on Article 13 on copyright policies under the new GDPR which indeed is so far from the world of media piracy in developing countries. I emphasized how we need to look also at why these policies are barely enforced based on historical and unfair media business models in the global south. Other questions grappled with the ways the "West" and the "Rest" are the same and yet different and so how can we build tech going forward?<br />
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I learnt a lot from this conference that "brings the technology from <b><i>tomorrow to today</i></b>" and how "pioneers and experts, innovators and early adopters talk about the <b><i>success</i></b> of ML, VR, AI, IoT, AR, Blockchain and Quantum in marketing and business."<br />
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1. Academia has a Pessimism Bias while the Tech world has a Hyper-Optimism bias.<br />
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2. When asked how do you know you’re "doing good," Jip Samhoud of <a href="https://samhoudmedia.com/" target="_blank">Samhoud Media</a> said that it’s about writing down your values and knowing in your heart you are making the world better. Clearly academic discussions on Ethics and Tech have <u>NOT</u> made inroads with young tech peeps.<br />
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3. A big part of the blame falls on the shoulders of academia. We urgently need to find common ground/ language with the tech world that speaks about "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_hacking" target="_blank">growth hacking</a>" instead of "surveillance capitalism"; that looks at the future through data maximization instead of data justice.<br />
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4. Academia and the Tech industry can be mutually beneficial: Scholars work slow and steady; thereby offer critical/ ethical guidelines. Tech peeps move fast and disruptive; thereby they offer insight on customer desires, needs, demands that scholars should give weight to in their theorizing. We can help them be more reflective while they can help us be more empathetic to the market.<br />
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5. Learnt that EU H2020 are funding data analytic entrepreneurs who are innovating and solving problems for the car industry (e.g. <a href="https://www.mediadistillery.com/" target="_blank">Media Distillery</a>) on the taxpayers dime. We should use EU money to pioneer solutions to bridge the growing data inequality that corporations would never fund. I start to wonder what the market of venture capitalism looks like and if taxpayers are indeed subsidizing innovation, what kind of shares and benefits do the tax payers receive when these innovations get adopted and monetized by the private sector?<br />
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Anyway, was enlightening...</div>
Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-54488348820924825692019-06-23T04:59:00.003-07:002019-06-23T04:59:21.222-07:00Motivational Speaker for Gemeente Amsterdam Diversity Program<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_GX4Prwp0CM/XQ9pdHEt7GI/AAAAAAAAA-E/qy9NTnxv5cQWLsG11yb0HMDgrK8fnNt9gCLcBGAs/s1600/Logo-Gemeente-Amsterdam.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="502" data-original-width="1600" height="125" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_GX4Prwp0CM/XQ9pdHEt7GI/AAAAAAAAA-E/qy9NTnxv5cQWLsG11yb0HMDgrK8fnNt9gCLcBGAs/s400/Logo-Gemeente-Amsterdam.png" width="400" /></a>I cannot emphasize enough how much I love Amsterdam. It really feels like home for me and that's saying a lot given that I have moved so much since I was a teenager. From India to the United States (San Francisco, New York and Boston), I finally came to the Netherlands about a decade ago. So, was really happy to get an invite from the <a href="http://echo-net.nl/en/2017/01/23/gemeente-amsterdam/" target="_blank">Gemeente Amsterdam</a> (the Amsterdam municipality) to give a motivational talk for a program they have initiated a few years ago to improve diversity and support those less represented in positions of power.<br />
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Of course, usually I associate the municipality with paying my taxes and water bills and all the tedium of city governance. Had to block that Pavlovian training temporarily as I went about participating and speaking about my life story to this wonderful group of young mentees and mentors of this diversity program.<br />
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This mentoring program is in partnership with a wonderful organization called <a href="http://echo-net.nl/en/" target="_blank">ECHO </a>which is an expert organization on diversity policy. It links students/fresh graduates of color to professionals in the public and
private sector. It’s a two way street where mentees learn from the professional
experience of their mentors and the mentors learn from the challenges mentees
face and hopefully reflect on their own blind spots. The idea is this process
will hopefully contribute to more diversity and inclusion in the participating
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My motivational speech was part of the closing session. It was good to not speak about academia for a change and focus more on how I got to where I got through the numerous experiments, failures with careers, hopping careers and countries and through this whole process, discovering myself. I spoke about the pressures of being a "token" as an Indian woman in the Netherlands and the responsibilities, privileges, and roles we play to represent entire communities whether we like it or not.<o:p></o:p><br />
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This kind of talk really keeps me grounded and am glad I got an opportunity to do it. </div>
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-25566169889196269462019-06-23T04:42:00.000-07:002019-06-23T04:42:34.938-07:00The Economist coverage of my Next Billion Users book<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I have been a loyal subscriber of <a href="https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/06/08/how-the-pursuit-of-leisure-drives-internet-use?frsc=dg%7Ce&fbclid=IwAR3hHl3vVeKUkV5T6h4L83CskTf6fGVGrYf9I9kTujbzdJNnvsW6bNgeuMM" target="_blank">The Economist </a>for more than a decade. I first got introduced to it during my Masters program in International Policy at Harvard University where everyone pretty much cited it to make their argument. I am well aware of their neo-liberal bias but am always appreciative of their strong voice, international perspective, and innovative lens to very different and often hidden trends in the current societies. </div>
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So, of course I was absolutely thrilled to see an article grounded in my new book <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674983786" target="_blank">'The Next Billion Users" with Harvard Press</a> titled, <a href="https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/06/08/how-the-pursuit-of-leisure-drives-internet-use?frsc=dg%7Ce&fbclid=IwAR3hHl3vVeKUkV5T6h4L83CskTf6fGVGrYf9I9kTujbzdJNnvsW6bNgeuMM" target="_blank">How the pursuit of leisure drives internet use.</a></div>
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Some of their quotes from the article are as follows. </div>
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"According to Payal Arora, a professor at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the internet is the leisure economy of the world’s poor. Until recently, talk of connectivity in the poor world has almost invariably been clothed in the pragmatic and well-meaning language of development. Aid agencies, international bodies and big tech companies told themselves and their funders that poor people needed an internet connection to lift themselves out of misery. They extolled farmers looking up grain prices, women seeking information on maternal health or pupils diligently signing up for online courses. The website for Facebook’s <a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="asynclazy" href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Finternet.org%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR2Mmx01ZWp31pDZHX75mkBTp3YVFpn_NO33nMqAwgvDwddK132Bn0qdT1w&h=AT39AJwi1VFUrkOowucjhKskDFLowUgH2VIW6iRAy73BoQwb2EnfXv0_ujpU0EHvk6dfqwCnHr6vdblb21G8LCli292U0RoI7OY4FTUBdK_lCHXVhR2gD-_CHfXH5Am2SNSZOgj2o6wkzjq4HkEZVz---Ezg" rel="noopener nofollow" style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">internet.org</a>, an arm of the company focused on bringing unconnected people online, is a classic of the genre: “Imagine the difference an accurate weather report could make for a farmer planting crops, or the power of an encyclopedia for a child without textbooks…The more we connect, the better it gets.”<br />
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"In her book “The Next Billion Users”, Ms Arora finds that Westerners assume that poverty “is a compelling enough reason for the poor to choose work over play when they go online.” The poor do not see it that way. Years of fieldwork across the globe have led Ms Arora to conclude that when it comes to getting online, “play dominates work, and leisure overtakes labour.”Where people planning development strategies imagined, metaphorically at least, Blackberries providing new efficiencies and productivity, consumers wanted the chat, apps and games of the iPhone. Worthier uses tend to follow. But they are the cart not the horse."</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">It feels very validating considering there was much push back from some of my mentors and peers over these years on the usage of "leisure" in development studies - I was told its too peripheral a topic to focus on, I was told to be careful to be associated with such a trivial theme in research and other such warnings. Glad to have not listened to them. </span></div>
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-76584296810393450432019-06-23T04:24:00.000-07:002019-06-23T04:24:23.752-07:00Keynote for the Digital Inclusion Policy Conference in London<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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What a wonderful and diverse audience for this <b>keynote</b> for the <a href="https://easychair.org/smart-program/DIPRC2019/AboutDIPRC.html" target="_blank">Digital Inclusion Policy conference</a> held in London by the University of Liverpool. It emerged from some very critical and timely questions such as - What type of skills do people need to ‘be digital’? Do different people from different ages and abilities need different types of skills and training? And how can we foresee what skills will be needed for future work? The conference brought together researchers, civic activists, government think-tanks, policy practitioners, tech entrepreneurs and more from very different contexts and countries which made these conversations more challenging and rewarding. </div>
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My <b>keynote</b> was about Inclusion with the emergence of the <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674983786" target="_blank">Next Billion Users </a>and what that means for equity and justice at a global level in this data-driven age. </div>
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The basis of my talk was as follows:</div>
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The mobile phone has been a global game-changer. There are more cellphones than people in China. India is the biggest market for WhatsApp, and Brazil ranks second after the United States as the top Twitter user group worldwide. By 2020, majority of data will come from the Global South. With cheap phones and a vast array of affordable data plans, the next billion users will emerge from outside the West. They are, for the most part, young, low-income but upwardly mobile and extremely enthusiastic users of social media. While this is good news for digital divide policy-makers and practitioners, this talk grapples with how this digital inclusion confronts current concerns on user commodification and tracking in this data-driven society. Is inclusion intrinsically empowering? How do we negotiate the optimism of these new users towards these life changing digital interventions with the growing pessimism of ‘surveillance capitalism’ that signals a dystopic future? Can media literacy, digital activism, and free will serve as a counter force to the bleak visions of ‘algorithmic oppression’? By unpacking some of these questions through the perspective of these next billion users, we may be able to move forward in our joint aspirations for the common good.</div>
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-11644200689864666752019-06-23T04:05:00.000-07:002019-06-23T04:05:25.458-07:006 marathon presentations at the ICA-Washington<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It was one of my busiest times I have had at the <a href="https://www.icahdq.org/page/2019Conference" target="_blank">International Communication Association</a>, the largest annual gathering of communication and media scholars. This year it was held in Washington DC. I presented a diverse set of papers at the main and pre-conference and also landed up having a pre-launch for the new University of California Press journal <a href="https://gp.ucpress.edu/" target="_blank">Global Perspectives</a> where I will serve as the Section Editor for the media and communication section.<br />
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It kick-started with me speaking alongside a wonderful panel of speakers - <a href="http://www.frankpasquale.com/" target="_blank">Frank Pasquale</a> and <a href="https://www.uva.nl/profiel/p/o/t.poell/t.poell.html" target="_blank">Thomas Poell</a> on 'The Moral order of Datafied Publics' at the <a href="https://www.icahdq.org/event/JusticeandOrderintheDatafiedSociety" target="_blank">Justice and Order in the Datafied Society Pre-conference. </a> My talk was drawn from the recently published paper with First Monday on <a href="https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/9840/7745" target="_blank">Benign Dataveillance? Examining novel data-driven governance systems in India and China. </a>Additionally, did some intellectual judo with <a href="https://www.asc.upenn.edu/people/faculty/joseph-turow-phd" target="_blank">Joseph Turow</a> as we clearly had different perspectives on how we viewed the datafication systems in developing countries. While I critiqued the Western-centrism and moral righteousness of the West towards these countries on their approach to democracy and the inherent pessimism bias embedded in Western media studies scholarship, Turow had a far darker and deterministic perspective of this "surveillance capitalism" regime.<br />
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Other presentations involved me speaking about my upcoming chapter on <a href="https://www.academia.edu/36304148/The_Oromo_Movement_and_Ethiopian_Border-making_using_Social_Media" target="_blank">Oromo activism and social media</a> for the <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Sage-Handbook-Media-Migration/dp/1526447215" target="_blank">Sage Handbook of Media and Migration </a>due to come out in 2020. Another paper I was very proud to present on was driven by a very smart student of mine Saskia Muhlbach on <a href="http://platformization.net/#conferencesandevents" target="_blank">Platformization of Cultural Production</a>. Our work was chosen out of more than a 100 paper submissions for their Special Issue. Lastly, I presented on my recently published work <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1527476418806092" target="_blank">Decolonizing privacy studies</a> where I push for a rethinking of the field and re-examining the embedded biases in the approaches to this topic. <br />
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Overall pretty crazy time changing gears from one topic to another but worked out well in the end. Was glad to engage with such a variety of disciplinary experts on topics of datafication and democracy, cultural platformization, digital privacy and surveillance and activism and rights.<br />
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-44116957038321412112019-05-01T12:23:00.000-07:002019-05-09T07:52:01.304-07:00Speaker on Datafication and healthcare at the Royal Tropical Institute<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xPsS_S8L9sE/XMnxp7NwKbI/AAAAAAAAA8U/YsLxR53gpzIH-oRHJt59fOckxJqbpyxewCLcBGAs/s1600/Internet-of-Medical-things.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="700" height="192" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xPsS_S8L9sE/XMnxp7NwKbI/AAAAAAAAA8U/YsLxR53gpzIH-oRHJt59fOckxJqbpyxewCLcBGAs/s320/Internet-of-Medical-things.jpg" width="320" /></a>Looks like May is blowing up on me. Getting intense but fascinating to be moving among very diverse circles from tech activists in Berlin to mobile healthcare ministries and healthcare donors. My book <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674983786" target="_blank">The Next Billion Users</a> is definitely pushing me into many different worlds all grappling with similar questions on fairness, tradeoffs, privacy futures, user aspirations, cultural differentiation and data regulation to name a few.<br />
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So on May 9th I spoke at the<a href="https://live.ft.com/Events/2019/FT-Future-of-Health-Coverage" target="_blank"> Future of Health Coverage conference in Amsterdam.</a> This is an event organized in partnership with the <a href="https://subs.ft.com/spa3_trials?segmentId=bd38a4e8-a0ca-fa19-51df-bf6d4367fd0b&utm_eu=WWSMADY&ds_medium=cpc&ds_rl=1266218&ds_rl=1266218&gclid=Cj0KCQjwh6XmBRDRARIsAKNInDHQ3YF_04nZcrHk0srquVVNm9Rl34YoC9qkaUncE2pW8EYh1Hs-oWIaAkoNEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds" target="_blank">Financial Times</a>, <a href="https://www.joeplangeinstitute.org/" target="_blank">Joep Lange Institute</a>, and the <a href="https://www.government.nl/ministries/ministry-of-foreign-affairs" target="_blank">Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs</a>. These organizations have been some of the ones who started to focus on the importance of financial innovation and the role of mobile technology in improving health systems in developing countries well before it became mainstream through mhealth initiatives and mobile apps.<br />
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Some questions explored together were <i>How can we allow those in need to ‘pay’ with their data? How can we find a balance between privacy first, in the interest of the individual, and mandatory sharing of (health) data, in the interest of society?</i><br />
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I spoke on a panel on the Value of Data for Health. <b>Here is a brief synopsis of the panel:</b><br />
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Big Data has changed the way we manage, analyse and leverage data in any industry. For the first time in history, we have the opportunity in developing countries - due to digital technology - to collect and analyse large amounts of health data. How can we assure the value created with health data flows back to society, to strengthen the health system for the good of all?<br />
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And what is cool is that Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands will be one of the Speakers too! Turns out she is also the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate <br />
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-66128804796546102152019-05-01T00:07:00.001-07:002019-05-01T00:07:32.319-07:00Talk at the iconic Volksbühne theatre on AI for the common good<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">On May 6th, I will be heading to Berlin to help launch the <a href="https://www.volksbuehne.berlin/en/programm/8283/school-of-disobedience-artificial-intelligence-for-the-common-good?fbclid=IwAR0IcEccOU0ACE2s7A640c6AdFl5lt5Cgb12x1DqMCtGK95sId1-RCy9wWE" target="_blank">School of Disobedience initiative</a> and fittingly it will be at Berlin's most iconic theatre - </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.volksbuehne.berlin/en/haus/529/about" target="_blank">Volksbühne, </a>home to art and activism in Germany for over a century. The event will feature a conversation with </span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorena-jaume-palasi-a13a3415a/" target="_blank">Lorena Jaume-Palasí</a> , the founder of <a href="https://www.ethicaltech-society.org/" target="_blank">The Ethical Tech Society,</a> a non-profit focused on the social impact of technology and Advisory Council member of AI for the Spanish government. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">We will be speaking about AI for the common good. I will be giving a talk before hand on the <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674983786" target="_blank">Next Billion Users</a>, drawing from my new book on how this population will push us to rethink what constitutes as "good" practice in AI futures. </span></span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Currently, artificial intelligence delivers lots of material for projections about the future of societies. It seems to disrupt our concept of space, time and borders. Predominant is the view that AI will become or even is already a tool to create dystopias of oppression. However, this is only the view of a few, albeit famous, scholars and intellectuals. </span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">But what about those who are supposed to be oppressed? Do they play an active role in the conversation? How is their perception of artificial intelligence and datafication? And what are their visions? </span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">I will be debunking many of these dominant discourses of pessimism and determinism of AI futures by taking on a more bottom up and cultural approach to this topic.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><b>The School of Disobedience </b>is an experimental format to test new ways of independent knowledge production in the 21st century. The inspiration is the spirit of Berlin, the city as an image for this time and this world, heterogeneous, international and politicized. The goal of the School of Disobedience is to concentrate this potential of the city and put it to use for working on a common future. The combination of humanistic and technological perspectives should help to support specific projects which are based on a progressive view of society and will further our sense of justice. This was l</span></span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">aunched in fall 2018 and continuing into 2019, the School of Disobedience will work in the Grünen Salon with a set of events to test formats and content of the para-academic practice. There will be seminars open for anybody interested in the connection of academic and activist thinking and working, a lab for technologists and theoreticians, a makerspace for people with experiences in different areas, from law to coding, from NGO to academia. Each month, a different academic expert leads a seminar on his or her research and invites people of all ages, professions and experience to join as its students. There will also be monthly public evening events in the evenings, which will allow the general audience an insight into that month’s </span><br />
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-37630523703726651892019-04-29T05:01:00.000-07:002019-04-29T05:01:11.660-07:00Keynote at the BRESTOLON symposium network<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Was nice to head back to <a href="https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/zemki/" target="_blank">ZEMKI Bremen</a> where I did my fellowship last year to give a keynote talk on <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674983786" target="_blank">The Next Billion Users </a>book with Harvard Press. This was for the BRESTOLON network which is an interesting formation of academic networks to sustain mentorship across diverse academic cultures and countries. The quality of questions and engagement was wonderful and am thrilled that one can accomplish such a network - a rare feat today!</div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gVoQUg2hWik/XMbdgV1441I/AAAAAAAAA74/UeYRUeISIU8gBW2ja84qeYGT_jV8l8o3QCLcBGAs/s1600/D5EerIvXsAAF_zU.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gVoQUg2hWik/XMbdgV1441I/AAAAAAAAA74/UeYRUeISIU8gBW2ja84qeYGT_jV8l8o3QCLcBGAs/s320/D5EerIvXsAAF_zU.jpg" width="320" /></a>Basically, <a href="http://brestolon.net/" target="_blank">Brestolon</a> is a research network collaboration between members of the Media and Communications Departments of <a href="http://www.sh.se/P3/ext/content.nsf/aget?openagent&key=about_the_subject_1299499883662" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in 0s;">Södertörn University</a>(Stockholm, Sweden); <a href="http://www.zemki.uni-bremen.de/en/start.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in 0s;">Bremen University</a> (Bremen, Germany); <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in 0s;">London School of Economics</a> (London, UK), and <a href="https://www.gold.ac.uk/media-communications/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in 0s;">Goldsmiths, University of London</a>(London, UK) and <a href="http://cecc.fch.lisboa.ucp.pt/en/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in 0s;">Catholic University of Portugal</a> (Lisbon, Portugal).</div>
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The network was launched in 2013 with a grant by the <a href="http://www.stint.se/en/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in 0s;">Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Reserach and Education</a> (STINT). Since then, it has gathered annually at the member universities in Stockholm (twice) and once in London, Bremen, and Lisbon. </div>
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-34723674187477423732019-04-12T23:50:00.001-07:002019-04-12T23:50:29.040-07:00Book launch at Athenaeum bookstore in Amsterdam<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0nz_jZYnJaY/XLGD4vMf2_I/AAAAAAAAA7Y/7k25BKJE3fgxoIOTWCppEpsQzysoaes-wCEwYBhgL/s1600/IMG_3694.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0nz_jZYnJaY/XLGD4vMf2_I/AAAAAAAAA7Y/7k25BKJE3fgxoIOTWCppEpsQzysoaes-wCEwYBhgL/s400/IMG_3694.JPG" width="400" /></a>Seems like these days I am having a lot of <b>"first" moments.</b> My first studio talk with <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4" target="_blank">BBC</a>, which will be broadcast in the next few weeks and then my first talk at a book store. Had my book launch at the <a href="https://www.athenaeum.nl/agenda/athenaeum-roeterseiland/payal-arora-in-conversation-with-tina-harris/" target="_blank">Athenaeum bookstore </a> in Amsterdam. Was such an interesting experience. Completely casual and intimate. A load of chairs and comfy couches clustered tightly together so you could have a real conversation with people. The audience was eclectic from retired people, tech entrepreneurs, media agencies, students, academics, and just folk interested in the topic. The format was smart - <a href="https://www.uva.nl/profiel/h/a/c.h.harris/c.h.harris.html" target="_blank">Tina Harris</a>, an anthropologist from University of Amsterdam engaged me in a conversation before we opened it up for questions. Nicely done overall. What better way to officially launch my book than to do it in such a lovely setting in my favorite city that I call home now!</div>
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-5792039443625706042019-04-03T14:16:00.000-07:002019-04-03T14:16:23.203-07:00New paper on Data-Based Governance out in First Monday<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://research.ntu.edu.sg/expertise/academicprofile/Pages/StaffProfile.aspx?ST_EMAILID=HSTEVENS" target="_blank">Hallam Stevens</a> from <a href="http://research.ntu.edu.sg/expertise/academicprofile/Pages/StaffProfile.aspx?ST_EMAILID=HSTEVENS">Nanjang Technological University </a>and I <b>co-edited a Special Issue</b> in <a href="https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/issue/view/620/showToc" target="_blank">First Monday</a>, one of the first Open Access journals on the internet. The theme of this issue is "<a href="https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/9831" target="_blank">Data-driven models of governance across borders: Datafication from the local to the global."</a><br />
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In essence, this special issue looks closely at <b><i>contemporary data systems in diverse global contexts</i></b> and through this set of papers, highlights the struggles we face as we <b><i>negotiate efficiency and innovation with universal human rights and social inclusion. </i></b>The studies presented in these essays are situated in diverse models of policy-making, governance, and/or activism across borders. Attention to big data governance in western contexts has tended to highlight how data increases state and corporate surveillance of citizens, affecting rights to privacy. By <b><i>moving beyond Euro-American borders</i></b> — to places such as Africa, India, China, and Singapore — we show here how data regimes are motivated and understood on very different terms.<br />
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It was wonderful to work with Hallam as we both were in sync on how to approach this theme and draw quality submissions and manage the review process to the final round. This theme first emerged from our panel that we held at <a href="https://aoir.org/aoir2017/" target="_blank">Association of Internet Researchers in Tartu, Estonia in 2017.</a><br />
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Within this Issue, I also published <b>my own individual paper</b> on <a href="https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/9840" target="_blank">"Benign dataveillance? Examining novel data-driven governance systems in India and China."</a> This paper has been in the works since but has since then been presented and reworked in a number of different workshops such as <a href="https://aoir.org/aoir2017/" target="_blank">AoIR2017 </a>, <a href="https://datajusticelab.org/conference-programme/" target="_blank">Data Justice Lab at Cardiff </a>and <a href="http://symposium.computationalsocialscience.eu/2017/" target="_blank">Computational Social Science in London</a>. In November 2018, as a Fellow in <a href="https://www.uni-bremen.de/zemki/" target="_blank">ZEMKI at the University of Bremen,</a> I was able to sharpen it to completion.<br />
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This paper basically examines <b><i>novel data-driven models of governance emerging from the Global South, specifically India and China, enabled by Net-based technologies</i></b>. The first model, the biometric identity scheme or ‘Aadhaar’ project in India consolidates citizens’ digital identities to enable access to government services such as welfare benefits. The second model is China’s Social Credit System. By combining the citizens’ financial records, online shopping data, social media behaviour and employment history, the system will produce a personal score for each citizen. This rating system will be used to measure the citizens’ trustworthiness. This research unpacks these value-embedded systems posited as digital innovations to strengthen citizenship through new forms of political participation, inclusion and representation. In doing so, <b><i>we are confronted with what constitutes as “democracy” in this datafied and global era, beyond the universalisms that are on offer today.</i></b><br />
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-859863223978929240.post-17045882877319189122019-03-25T03:32:00.000-07:002019-03-25T03:32:00.084-07:00First Book Reviews out with Times Higher Ed & E&T magazine<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Am thrilled to read these positive reviews of my new book "<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674983786">The Next Billion Users: Digital Life beyond the West" with Harvard University Press. </a> It is particularly wonderful to see one of the reviews emanate from the well read Times Higher Ed. </div>
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I am also glad to see the Engineering and Tech magazine take this book up (as well as Tech Crunch a few weeks ago), which signals to me that the tech industry has a growing interest in broadening their worldviews beyond the technical aspects to that which is ethical, cultural and may I even dare to say, philosophical. I really am looking forward to future engagements with engineers, programmers and other stakeholders at the forefront of shaping our digital platforms.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Times Higher Education<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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“This powerful book
explores actual online lives in China, India and Brazil and asks why many of us
in the West are surprised and sometimes offended by the fact that the
impoverished are just as committed as we are to the search for “moments of
pleasure and joy." Click <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/new-and-noteworthy-21-march-2019">here </a>to view this mention.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Engineering and Technology magazine</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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"Make no mistake. While we wring our hands in anguish over how we are somehow being let down by the fact that Dryden’s ‘noble savage’ is neither of those things, developers of social media platforms will be working out how to monetise the pleasure of the poor. Uncomfortable, myth-busting and compelling, ‘The Next Billion Users’ challenges our collective superiority complexes and questions the way we see technology in the connected world." Click <a href="https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/03/book-review-the-next-billion-users-by-payal-arora/">here</a> for the full review.</div>
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Payal Arorahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09434669314481646743noreply@blogger.com0