Automation by Design is a global, interdisciplinary, virtual CBI symposium on the politics and culture of digital automation. We welcome papers in a broad range of fields across the humanities and social sciences. These include history, STS, sociology, anthropology, media studies, policy, legal studies, geography, communication, rhetoric, information studies, and philosophy.

The platformization of society, fueled by automation and machine learning, impacts IT users in deleterious, discriminatory, democracy-threatening, and at times deadly, ways that intersect and compound. This symposium seeks papers that explore how automation—from its algorithmic and architectural design to its structuring, materiality, maintenance, and use—has developed jointly with social politics. We are especially interested in papers that address education, law, capitalism, labor, science, medicine, leisure, privacy/security, surveillance, the body, and the environment.

Program Committee:

Dr. Jeffrey Yost (@JustCodeCulture), CBI Dir. & Res. Prof., HSTM, Univ. of Minnesota

Dr. Gerardo Con Diaz, Assoc. Prof., STS, Univ. of California, Davis & Stanford Univ. Fellow

Dr. Honghong Tinn, Asst. Prof., HSTM & ECE, Univ. of Minnesota  

Dr. Colette Perold, Asst. Prof., Media Studies, Univ. of Colorado