Home - Automated Literacies

The work of the Automated Literacies project takes place on the traditional territories of the (Tsleil-Waututh), kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. We strive to align the values, goals and methods of our project to Indigenous sovereignty and more just ways of living on these lands.

AUTOMATED LITERACIES

Questions we explore:

How is automation changing what it means to be literate (when clicking and swiping indicate consent and understanding, and when machines are reading and writing with us and for us)?
How does automation challenge our ideas of what it is to be a ‘person’, a citizen, to have agency and rights?
How is automation re-shaping consent and trust in institutions, and in one another?
Is the ‘data’ that people provide to automated platforms the price of access to the necessities of daily living?
How could we design and think about automation, literacies and democratic access differently?

CAPTCHA’s verify we are “human”, government services, social media and online job sites (just to name a few) use automation to verify identity, extract consent, and make decisions that affect people’s lives.

Learn more

Read more about our team and our projects, what we are reading and some of our writing and experiments-in-progress.