Hamid, "Stopping the Virus or Expanding the PIC?" (2020) and Benjamin, "Informed Refusal" (2016)

The group began with questions.

[1] In the Benjamin piece there is a description of “technologies of humility”—what do we make use of these technologies? How can a technology compel some sort of reflection or response? Might these technologies provide an alternative to “carceral technologies”? What might non-carceral technologies of contact tracing look like? Are these possible?

 [2] The example of the sp0n: how is it possible for the company to switch between these two domains and to commodify their product in different ways?

[3] pp. 12 (Benjamin) the technologies of humility—humility isn’t typically something we regard in terms of techniques/technology/technicity. In Sarah’s piece, the domains of health and incarceration are linked through technology. How do we think about studying “cross domain phenomena” through technology? Is there something specific of “technicity” that makes it ripe for studying across domains?

[4] pp. 7-8 Benjamin. “It is important to distinguish the use of religion here: not necessarily to contradict scientific claims (as in climate denial discourse) but to question the authority and power that inheres in the figure of ‘‘the scientist’’ as the only one who can purportedly produce legitimate knowledge” (7-8). How can this also relate to Sarah’s work?

[5] If techniques such as contact tracing confer moral/legal responsibility, does opting-out of these techniques also confer responsibility?

[6] Sarah’s last paragraph: technologies and techniques in one domain inform another. This seems to complicate forms of resistance. How does one get this point across (esp. to different groups)? History might be one route. What do we make of this point that technologies and techniques form each other, and the ways in which this complicates resistance?

 Discussion followed.

What are some of the cross-domain analyses that we couldn’t do? The question of which technologies mediate between domains is an empirical/historical question. To assume that they are distinct domains (in advance) of the history of computation is to make some optional assumptions.

There are certain domains in history which we could see as just a single domain. Early in the pandemic, the problem of contact tracing was tethered to the concept of freedom. Is there a way of justifying any analytic distinction between domains? Or is this always, in some sense, negligent? Where does this leave the project of describing differences within the same plane? There is a popular narrative that computation is “colonizing” knowledges. If that were true, then that might be one way of looking at two domains: one mode of knowledge is antagonistic to another. When one wants to identify antagonisms, distinguishing between domains becomes useful.

In North America, contract tracing was seen as an infringement on personal freedom (anti-democratic).

How does one do inter-domain analysis, methodologically? It always begins when one encounters a weird relationship or entanglement. Confront some relationship that seems commonsensically related together—then ask why. Who are the actors? What are the different factors supporting the entanglement? Map these relationships. Get as much documentation as possible. Then a story starts to unravel very quickly. Often the history will be very recent and local. Once you have that story and understand the relationship, that mapping gives one a sense of strategies of resistance.

For folks on the inside, the connection between public health and policing is immediate. What are some of the key political education aims? Organizing for early release encounters many unexpected obstacles.

What would resistance in terms of “technologies of humility” look like? Especially for something like contact tracing/some alternative? There is an important distinction between contract tracing and proximate tracing. The former is not necessarily carceral. It’s the carceral entanglement that matters. The individualistic nature of health culture in the US is another factor.