Class Presentation on Wendy Chun's Discriminating Data ( Marisol Vasquez Non-Core Post 11 / 10 )

This past week I had to present on Discriminating Data for Professor Kara Keeling’s class, and I had the pleasure of reading the entire book, making my way to its end and the final chapter on Facial Recognition Technology. While my presentation mostly focused on correlation, I thought I might as well supplement this post with some parting thoughts after reading this whole book. Overall, I learned so much from Chun’s Discriminating Data, and found great pleasure, not only in her critique through critical theory, but also learning about the different statistical methods and engineering principles she dismantles in these pages. Discriminating Data helped greatly inform and deepen my understanding of big data in information technologies. Despite the technical heaviness of this material, I also found it humorous! Quite frankly, the chapter critiquing facial recognition technology and predicting gayness made me laugh out loud. As with the Cambridge Analytica example and the FRT, Chun unveils the dark humor in these technologies and how engineers manipulate data and information to find the most simplistic and reductive answers to the cultural and social forces that confine human beings to a genre, in Sylvia Wynter’s understanding of the term. For me, what made me laugh, especially in the final chapter on recognition, was how Chun discussed the methods and processes behind how the engineers conducted the research or the reductive correlations and associations common in incel chat groups. For example, the comparative “biological explanations” of “skull size” and physiognomy weaponized to justify the foreclosed destinies of social rejection endured by incels.   

From my presentation for Prof. Kara Keeling's class. I look forward to the FRT lecture this coming Thursday. (Also thank you to Ray for figuring out the impossible screen share technology).