Hello, and welcome to the Digital Alchemy Podcast brought to you by the International Communication Association Podcast Network. My name is Moya Bailey. I'm an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University and the founder of the Digital Apothecary Lab. For this episode, I've invited Sasha Costanza-Chock to join me to discuss what is Digital Alchemy, and its influence in the creation of the Algorithmic Justice League.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Digital Alchemy Podcast. I'm so excited to be here with Sasha Costanza-Chock. Sasha Costanza-Chock is a researcher and designer who works to support community led processes that build shared power, dismantle the matrix of domination and advanced ecological survival. They are a non binary trans them. Sasha is known for their work on networks, social movements, transformative media organizing and design justice. Sasha is the Director of Research and Design at the Algorithmic Justice League, a faculty associate with the Berkman Kline Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Design Justice Network. They are the author of two books and numerous journal articles, book chapters, and other research publication which I just have to pause for, because I love the Algorithmic Justice League as a name. Sounds like superheroes.
Yes.
Sasha's latest book Design Justice: Community Led Practices to Build the World We Need was published by The MIT Press in 2020. Sasha, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today.
Thanks so much for inviting me, Moya. It's so nice to see you, and I can't wait for this conversation.
Wonderful! I'd love to just start with a little bit about your background. How did you get into tech digital things? What's your hero origin story going along with the Justice League?
Oh, my gosh! Well, how much time do we have? I guess you know, one way I like to start this is, you know, talking about music, actually. I really got into tech stuff through music. I'm a musician. I play guitar, bass, make sample based electronic music, and other things. When I was in college, I actually studied electronic music and Cultural Studies. As I got really, really into learning how to make sample based music, do sound synthesis, recording and production, and stuff like that. I was also sort of reading and learning more about the history of the relationship between music technology, and power.
Yes.
There's this great great book by Jacques Attali called Noise: The Political Economy of Music, that a mentor of mine really turned me on to at the time. This was the 90s, and I was living in Boston, and together with a group of friends we started throwing raves. Basically, we were organizing these parties where we would not get permits, we would find spaces, abandoned warehouses under a bridge in a park, and we would set up a sound system and we would do electronic dance music parties with drum and bass, jungle, hip hop and trip hop, and lots of different genres and noisy stuff as well. Through that process, we were also kind of exploring, how do you sort of create a cultural scene? How does that relate to the media and visibility? There was this whole thing going on where the most popular clubs in Boston were all on Lansdowne Street, and they were owned most of them by those same people owned WFMx, which was the largest like radio station, and they own the Phoenix weekly paper. They would just book people in their clubs, promote them on the radio and promote them in their newspaper. They had this like consolidated landscape for producing and promoting culture, and none of us were connected to that scene. We were doing stuff outside of that. We wanted to do stuff for free or affordably, and they started calling the cops on all of our parties.
Oh my goodness.
Now, this was early to mid 90s, going to the late 90s, and so this was was also the moment when the internet started to become a thing. Few people were, as you know, kind of starting to get online, getting access to email, and you know websites were all HTML hand coded. There was this website at the time called the GRID, The Global Rave Information Database. It was just this archive repository of all of the raves that were happening all over the world. You could just send an email with your event info, and they would post it there. It was this kind of interesting moment where we were thinking, we could use this new technology to break this media monopoly, and create a space that we feel like is more inclusive in terms of race, class, and gender, more accessible. We can have fun, and create new genres and stuff together. That was like an entry point through music, and music technology, and then learning how to promote events outside of access to hegemonic media channels. I got really interested in the possibilities of the internet, and that's one way in.
Oh, that's fantastic. That's fantastic, an then I'm curious was it working or seeing GRID that got you thinking about design? I'm also thinking that GRID, at this moment probably being HTML based, wasn't the prettiest thing to look at? Wondering, how did your interest in design justice develop alongside?
Wow! Oh my gosh! Okay. From all of that work, I started doing audio production for documentary films that were being produced by the Indie Media Network. Indie Media was, you know, a group of sort of anarchist, hackers, and social movement people from different places who similarly around the same time, like late 90's, started thinking about the possibilities of this new platform, the internet, for telling social movement stories, and doing movement led journalism when movements were being written out of the mass media narrative. It really crystallized in 1999 in Seattle, during the protests against the World Trade Organization, and the idea of a global capitalism that was based on the expansion of American US brands everywhere, the erasure and replacement of all types of local cultures and economies through this one world culture, and all of the labor, and environmental, and feminist, and other concerns that were kind of like linked in that struggle for another vision of globalization. Indie Media was like news from the movement for another possible set of worlds. I got connected with Indie Media originally through music, making audio tracks for these documentaries that Indie Media would produce about movements around the world. Around that point, I got more linked to and interested in the free software movement and web design stuff. Indie Media was a social movement and network, but also a series of websites that were linked to each other with syndicated content from about 160 local Indie Media Centers around the world. I started learning more about software and blogging platforms. I'm not a coder, so I learned how to build simple pages initially, and then how to install and configure content management systems to help different local Independent Media Centers as they got set up. Through that process, I got really interested in how are we making these decisions about what you can and can't do on these sites that we're making. Who's getting included in these conversations about what in the media is going to look like and what it's going to be like. I'd say some of my interest in design of technologies and interfaces with communication technology came from that period of time. Where I really got hooked into it was, of course, through the Allied Media Conference thru the AMC.
I wonder if you might talk a little bit about the Design Justice Network, and how that connects to your book, and just what it means for you to be thinking along with this idea of Design Justice.
I have been involved in many processes to design and develop technologies, and I feel really good about that, and proud of them. There are many roles and many different skill sets that we need to build the worlds that we want. That's actually what Design Justice is about, so thank you for that reminder. Yeah, so Design Justice is it's not a term that I came up with. It's a term that comes out of a community of practice that really coalesced at the Allied Media Conference. The AMC has always been a place where it's not your typical sort of academic style conference where people would just come and present their papers or just like talk at you.
Yes.
There's always been a strong hands on making and building, and hacking and playing, you know, component to AMC. I played many hats at AMC, but for a while I remember working on the Media a Gogo Lab, and the Discotech Convenings (the Discovering Technology spaces) that came out of the work of the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition and the work that Dan, Sarah, and many others were doing. Dedicating some time and energy to like, you know, helping to organize these very sort of hands on spaces within AMC. Out of that work, I remember meeting Yuna Lee in that context. Yuna was organizing the first games track at AMC, and also came and spent some time in this hands on, you know, media lab space. Design Justice as a term, and then the DJ (the Design Justice principles themselves) were initially crafted at this collaborative workshop space at the 2015 AMC that they facilitated. Those principles kind of evolved and got workshopped a little bit over the next couple of years. It really was resonating with people, and so Design Justice grew from a single workshop to a whole track at AMC, where people who were inspired by the Design Justice Network principles, proposed workshops and practice spaces. It just kind of kept growing until a few years ago, we said, well, a lot of people want there to be more of an ongoing space for conversation about these principles and how to apply them. Now, there are Design Justice Local Nodes in 11 cities around the world where people are sort of meeting regularly to work with the principles and build community around the idea of how could we reimagine design as a way to dismantle instead of constantly reproduce oppressive systems like the Matrix of Domination, a Patricia Hill Collins term for the interlocking-white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism. We could add, you know, ableism, and settler colonialism, and other sort of axis of oppression and resistance.
That's fantastic, and it kind of takes me to the question and the reason for the season of this podcast. This podcast is called Digital Alchemy. I'm wondering if you see Digital Alchemy as something that resonates with Design Justice too?
Absolutely! I feel like, now I'm trying to imagine what the relationship between Digital Alchemy and Design Justice is in like a visual mental form. I don't know what it is, but it's some type of really swirling, beautiful dance that's definitely like interconnected and interlocking concepts. I actually, if it's okay, I want to share the new mission, vision and intentions of the Design Justice Network?
Oh, please. Ooo, an exclusive.
The Design Justice Network, Who We Are: We're a home for people who are committed to embodying and practicing the design Justice Network principles. Our Mission: We wield our collective power and experiences to bring forth worlds that are safer, more just, more accessible, and more sustainable. We uplift liberatory experiences, practices, and tools, and critically question the role of design and designers. Rooted in a sense of abundance, possibility, and joy; we provide connection, care, and community for design justice practitioners. Our vision is that we envision futures where design is used to support care, healing, liberation, joy, and deep sustainability. We dream of worlds in which design is truly led by the experiences and brilliance of those who are marginalized by interlocking systems of oppression. We also know that birthing dreams requires discomfort, and moving beyond good intentions.
Oh! Oh, that is so good! That is so good! It has me thinking too about kind of where this happened, where this work is possible. This, to me, sounds like it's bigger than and broader than the academy, or any other type of institution. I'm curious, what do you feel the role is for academics in creating and birthing a new world, and should they just step aside (and let other people lead)? Which is, you know, I think that's kind of where I'm at right now. I'm curious what you think what what might you say to professors who are teaching communication studies, people who have found your work? A lot of my students really love Design Justice, love the text, and I think are struggling with how to reconcile that with the realities of being in the academy now.
Moya with the hard questions. Yeah, these institutions are terrible, and they were constructed for a certain purpose. In a lot of ways they uphold, and deepens very oppressive histories, and structures, and ways of being, and culture. At the same time, under the current system of neoliberal white supremacist capitalism, universities still do provide some nooks and crannies, and corners that of possibility and exploration. I am of the mind of, like any institution, how much can we push them? How much can we transform them? What can we do with them? I feel the same way about political parties, governments or tech companies for that matter. People inside the tech industry are reading Design Justice in ways that I never would have necessarily expected. Yesterday, a former student told me that they're now working at Apple, and Apple employees are reading Design Justice for their first book club this year. I did a talk at Twitter. Last year, I did a thread on Twitter, where I talked to my community and was like, "Hey, everyone, I've been invited to go talk to Twitter, what should we tell them"? Of course, people responded with a lot of great suggestions that black feminists have been saying for a decade, at least, about ways that Twitter needs to improve things to reduce hatred, and trolling, and constant attacks on all kinds of marginalized peoples and especially on black women and femmes. Yeah, so to me, this is an opportunity to just try and amplify all of these critiques that people have had and have been bringing forward anyway. That's a roundabout way of trying to get to our role as academics. Just whatever privileges we get access to, yeah, I think we have a responsibility to try and use and leverage those two, 1) continue to bring in additional people and more voices, and also 2) amplify what people coming from social movements have already been saying, and sometimes that has an effect. I have an example.
Oh, please. Yes, go ahead.
At the Algorithmic Justice League, which is an organization founded by Dr. Joy Bualamwini, a computer scientist widely known for doing some of the first core research that clearly and technically demonstrated that computer vision and facial recognition technologies perform least well on darker skin tone women. This week, we are celebrating a win, which is that the IRS announced a couple of weeks ago that they were going to start using facial recognition technology as a way to verify people's identity to access your tax records. Dr. Buolamwini, Dr. Timnit Gebru, and others research demonstrated this technology is really flawed, and that was then confirmed by government studies by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). We got together with a whole bunch of our friends, and allies, and other organizations that we've been sort of building with for years to launch a big campaign, and Dr. Buolamwini wrote an op ed, originally for The Washington Post, but it was run in the Atlantic. Then the Washington Post ran their own editorial, it sounded a lot like Dr Buolamwini. Anyway, that happens, and then there was a petition called dumpid.me that was hosted by Fight for the Future. Then there were a whole bunch of meetings happening behind the scenes with different senators and Congress people, people in the White House, and the different agencies. Within a week basically, the IRS, the head of the Treasury Department announced that they were rethinking this and that they were going to not use facial recognition. We canceled this $87 million contract. This is a major agency that touches everybody's life, and this is going to reduce harm to people in a concrete way. Of course, the same company, ID.me, has contracts with the Veterans Administration, and a whole bunch of other federal agencies, and 30 different states where they're a gateway to accessing unemployment benefits and all types of other stuff. We show that they're vulnerable. We made facial recognition technology, as a way to verify yourself, politically untouchable at least for Democrats (and for some Republicans). It's across the aisle issue that many people can get behind for various reasons. Suddenly, we have a window of opportunity to really roll back the normalization of this very invasive, harmful technology that deepens racism and gender based discrimination. That feels like a win.
That is a win, and it definitely, to me, embodies both Design Justice and Digital Alchemy in the sense that you're taking what you're given and the product as it exist. Then shifting to say, actually, we do need to get our federal taxes done, but can we do it with less harm? Which is by not incorporating ID.me into the whole apparatus, and so I think harm reduction is another piece of this. It's a big part of what I think about in terms of how we do this, and leveraging privilege in the academies if we leverage our academic privilege in ways that help people outside. Kind of its own harm reduction for others.
Absolutely, yes. Stay in the academy (if you can) to help with harm reduction, but also don't be afraid to leave if you need to.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, that's so wonderful. I think that's a wonderful note to end on. Is there anything else that you would like to share with the listening audience anything else you want to say?
Gosh, I don't know. I think just check out designjustice.org to get involved with the activities of Design Justice Network. Check out ajl.org to learn more about the Algorithmic Justice League.
Thank you again, Sasha for your time. We'll see you next time on another episode of Digital Alchemy.
Digital Alchemy is a production of the International Communication Association Podcast Network. This series is sponsored by the School of Communication at Northwestern University. Our producer is Daniel Christain. Our executive producer is Aldo Diaz Caballero. The theme music is by Matt Oakley. Please check the show notes in the episode description to learn more about me, my guest, and Digital Alchemy overall. Thanks for listening!
