Lilly Irani
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View article: From Tech Lash to Tech Fash: Strategic Reflections on a Decade of Collective Organizing in Computing
From Tech Lash to Tech Fash: Strategic Reflections on a Decade of Collective Organizing in Computing Open
Computing is a field plagued with presentism, oriented towards the new in ways that limit our design and research practices - as well as our capacity to understand and collectively respond to emerging crises. To improve our sensemaking and…
View article: Can Smartness Fail? The Charisma of High Tech as Class Politics
Can Smartness Fail? The Charisma of High Tech as Class Politics Open
This paper analyzes how smart city infrastructures are planned, implemented, and scaled, even when they fail. Understanding how these processes unfold is critical for technology researchers committed to creating equitable public infrastruc…
View article: Emerging Practices in Participatory AI Design in Public Sector Innovation
Emerging Practices in Participatory AI Design in Public Sector Innovation Open
Local and federal agencies are rapidly adopting AI systems to augment or automate critical decisions, efficiently use resources, and improve public service delivery. AI systems are being used to support tasks associated with urban planning…
View article: Encountering Innovation, Countering Innovation
Encountering Innovation, Countering Innovation Open
What could be gained by putting science and technology studies (STS) in conversation with innovation studies (IS)? These distinct fields have shared people over decades, as they build concepts, careers, institutions, and even nations. I re…
View article: Contested Care: COVID-19 Surveillance and Health Data in the Workplace
Contested Care: COVID-19 Surveillance and Health Data in the Workplace Open
Within the ongoing disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, technologically mediated health surveillance programs have vastly intensified and expanded to new spaces. Popular understandings of medical and health data protections came into quest…
View article: Hostile Ecologies
Hostile Ecologies Open
This paper describes how the contemporary technology innovation ecology is hostile to community-driven design. These hostilities are important to understand if we want to intervene in the policy landscape of technology innovation to suppor…
View article: Transportation for Smart and Equitable Cities: Integrating Taxis and Mass Transit for Access, Emissions Reduction, and Planning
Transportation for Smart and Equitable Cities: Integrating Taxis and Mass Transit for Access, Emissions Reduction, and Planning Open
Policy report synthesizing independent research on impacts of transportation network companies (TNCs) such as Uber and Lyft on local safety, economies, and social equity. Outline of a vision for creating publicly regulated and supported "f…
View article: HCI Tactics for Politics from Below: Meeting the Challenges of Smart Cities
HCI Tactics for Politics from Below: Meeting the Challenges of Smart Cities Open
As crucial public functions are transferred to computer systems, emerging technologies have public implications that are often shaped beyond public influence and oversight. "Smart city" and "modernization" projects are just some examples o…
View article: The Labor of Maintaining and Scaling Free and Open-Source Software Projects
The Labor of Maintaining and Scaling Free and Open-Source Software Projects Open
Free and/or open-source software (or F/OSS) projects now play a major and dominant role in society, constituting critical digital infrastructure relied upon by companies, academics, non-profits, activists, and more. As F/OSS has become lar…
View article: Broken Promises of Civic Innovation: Technological, Organizational, Fiscal, and Equity Challenges of GE Current CityIQ
Broken Promises of Civic Innovation: Technological, Organizational, Fiscal, and Equity Challenges of GE Current CityIQ Open
Policy report assessing San Diego's smart city deployment published from Institute for Practical Ethics, UC San Diego.
View article: The Promise and Limits of Tailorability for Turkopticon
The Promise and Limits of Tailorability for Turkopticon Open
The increased accessibility of open-source software promises wider opportunity for people to build tools for their own purposes. We present an exploratory case study of rebuilding Turkopticon (TO), an activist tool that for digital workers…
View article: Ways of Knowing When Research Subjects Care
Ways of Knowing When Research Subjects Care Open
This paper investigates a hidden dimension of research with real world stakes: research subjects who care -- sometimes deeply -- about the topic of the research in which they participate. They manifest this care, we show, by managing how t…
View article: Chasing Innovation: Making Entrepreneurial Citizens in Modern India
Chasing Innovation: Making Entrepreneurial Citizens in Modern India Open
In Chasing Innovation, Lilly Irani shows the contradictions that arise as designers, engineers, and businesspeople frame development and governance as opportunities to innovate.
View article: Hackathons and the Cultivation of Platform Dependence
Hackathons and the Cultivation of Platform Dependence Open
Private firms, public institutions, and civil society organizations have taken up hackathons as a way of engaging publics in technological innovation all over the world. This chapter offers ethnographic and historical case studies of three…
View article: Negotiating Engines of Difference
Negotiating Engines of Difference Open
invited us to a conversation on what it would mean to decolonize computing, we attempted not simply to go back to our earlier work on "postcolonial computing" but to rethink postcoloniality and its limitations in the practice of technopoli…
View article: “Design Thinking”: Defending Silicon Valley at the Apex of Global Labor Hierarchies
“Design Thinking”: Defending Silicon Valley at the Apex of Global Labor Hierarchies Open
This paper examines the emergence of “design thinking” as a form of technical expertise. It demonstrates that “design thinking” articulates a racialized understanding of labor, judgment, and the subject and attempts to maintain whiteness a…
View article: “Design Thinking”: Defending Silicon Valley at the Apex of Global Labor Hierarchies
“Design Thinking”: Defending Silicon Valley at the Apex of Global Labor Hierarchies Open
This paper examines the emergence of “design thinking” as a form of technical expertise. It demonstrates that “design thinking” articulates a racialized understanding of labor, judgment, and the subject and attempts to maintain whiteness a…
View article: Boundary Troubles
Boundary Troubles Open
We stage a dialogue between two areas of growing interest in HCI: making cultures and research through design. Both have only recently gained momentum, and so each of their proponents are demarcating--often too sharply--who and what is to …
View article: Operating an Employer Reputation System: Lessons from Turkopticon, 2008-2015
Operating an Employer Reputation System: Lessons from Turkopticon, 2008-2015 Open
In November 2005, Amazon launched Mechanical Turk (AMT), a website where can post tasks, called Human Intelligence Tasks or HITs, for workers to complete for pay. Workers are required to agree that they are independent contractors, not em…