Dear Colleagues, If you haven't registered yet, please register now for "Just Code." (Free, but registration is required, and *registration will close prior to the event*-if you registered for the postponed public symposium originally planned for May in MPLS, you are registered for this online symposium and needn't register again). The Charles Babbage Institute (CBI) for Computing, Information, and Culture's online symposium “Just Code: Power, Inequality, and the Global Political Economy of IT" (Oct. 23-24; register) <https://justcode.cbi.umn.edu/home> examines how code—construed broadly from AI, software, and systems to bodies of law, policy, and practice—structures and reinforces power relations. Just Code will explore the ways that individuals and institutions use algorithms and computer systems to establish, legitimize, and reinforce widespread social, material, commercial, and cultural inequalities and power imbalances. Just Code's talented and diverse scholars (schedule is both below and on the event website) will illuminate themes of IT and race, gender, labor, politics, and education across time, place, and culture. From AI and biometrics in policing, labor control and contention in China, surveillance capitalism, and environmental racism to postcolonial IT control and resistance in India, IT and counterinsurgency in Brazil, code work in Mexico, and IT and disability, "Just Code" will highlight and contextualize systems, structures, policies, and practices extending social, economic, and environmental inequality and injustice in global society. Best, Jeff and Con [image: CBI Just Code jpeg 2 top half B.jpg] *Just Code Symposium Schedule* *Friday, Oct 23**rd** (All times CST)* 9:30 to 9:40 am *Opening Remark and Acknowledging Sponsors/Co-Sponsors* Jeffrey Yost 9:40 to 11:20 am *Keynote Session I: Racial Inequality and Culture* Chair: Jeffrey Yost, Charles Babbage Institute (CBI) and History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Minnesota Mar Hicks, Lewis College of Human Sciences, Illinois Institute of Technology. “Computers as Colonizers: British Computing Companies and Indian Technological Resistance, 1955-1975.” Stephanie A. Dick, History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania. “NYSIIS, and the Introduction of Modern Digital Computing to Domestic Policing.” 11:30 am to 12:45 pm *Reinvention and Resistance* Chair: Honghong Tinn, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, University of Minnesota Colette Perold, Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University. “Modern Computing and Counterinsurgency in 1960s Brazil.” Hector Beltran, Department of Anthropology, MIT. “Code Work: Thinking with the System in México.” Shreeharsh Kelkar, Interdisciplinary Studies, University of California, Berkeley. “Reinventing Expertise in the Age of Platforms: Technology Reformers and the Platformization of Institutions.” 12:45 pm to 1:30 pm - Lunch Break 1:30 to 2:20 pm *Labor and Politics* Chair: Stephanie Dick, History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania Devika Narayan, Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota. “Between the Cloud and a Hard Place: Asset-Light Computing and the New World of Off-Shore Labor.” Corinna Schlombs, Department of History, Rochester Institute of Technology. “US Labor Unions, Automation, and Technical Unemployment: Fighting for Whose Justice?” Gerardo Con Diaz, Science and Technology Studies, University of California, Davis, "Prometheus's Patents: Owning Medical Algorithms in the 21st Century.” 2:25 to 3:40 pm *Education, Work, and Culture* Chair: Sally Kohlstedt, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, University of Minnesota Kate Miltner, Centre for Research in Digital Education, University of Edinburgh. “Everyone Can Code? (Re)producing Inequalities at an American Coding Academy.” Elizabeth Semler, HSTM, UMN. “Employee Handbooks, Company Calendars, and In/Equality at Midwest Computing Companies.” Jeffrey R. Yost, Charles Babbage Institute and HSTM, University of Minnesota. “Reassessing the Iconic and Unbundling the Ironic: IBM System Engineering, Gender, and Antitrust." 3:50 to 5:15 pm *Keynote Session II: Government and Corporate Surveillance in Comparative Economic Contexts* Chair: Gerardo Con Diaz, University of California, Davis and Jeffrey R. Yost, CBI and HSTM, University of Minnesota Ya-Wen Lei, Department of Sociology, Harvard University. “Delivering Discontent: Platform Architecture, Labor Control, and Contention in China.” Josh Lauer, College of Liberal Arts, University of New Hampshire & Professor Ken Lipartito, Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs, Florida International University. “Infrastructures of Extraction: Surveillance Technologies in the Modern Economy.” *Saturday, Oct. 24**th **(All times CST)* Brief Day Two Welcome, Jeffrey Yost 9:30 to 11:00 am *Keynote Session III: Social and Environmental Control Through Computers* Chair: Gerardo Con Diaz, University of California, Davis Jennifer Alexander, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, University of Minnesota. “The Mask of Sanity: Manipulation and Psychopathology at the Human-Computer Interface.” Theo Dryer, AI Now Institute at New York University, AI Now Institute at New York University. “Streams of Data, Streams of Water: Encoding Water Policy and Environmental Racism.” 11:10 am to 12:30 pm *Law, Environment, and Policy* Chair: Elizabeth Petrick, Department of History, Rice University Shun-Ling Chen, Institute Jurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica. “The Politics of Openness in the Age of the Cloud and AI.” Hamid Ekbia, Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, Indiana University. “Algorithmic Collusion: Legal Challenges and Social Risks.” 12:40 to 1:30 - Lunch Break 1:30 to 2:45 pm *Interfaces and Infrastructures* Chair: Corinna Schlombs, Department of History, Rochester Institute of Technology Elizabeth Petrick, Department of History, Rice University. “Spanning Space and Time Barriers: Computerized Conferencing, Disability, and Citizenship.” Chigusa Kita, Department of Informatics, Kyoto University. “Character Codes and Local Writing Cultures.” Andoni Ibarra, Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU & Dr. Raúl Tabarés Gutiérrez, Investigator, TECNALIA Research & Innovation. “Conversational Interfaces: Epistemic Opacity and the Disruptive Construction of Digital Power.” *"Injustice wears the same harsh face wherever it shows itself."*-Ralph Ellison Jeffrey R. Yost, Ph.D. Director, Charles Babbage Institute Research Professor, Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine 222 21st Avenue South University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN 55455 612 624 5050 Phone 612 625 8054 Fax
