Keynote: Finding the joy and excitement in a... colonial tech world
summary
Argues that computing is entangled with settler colonialism and shows how that shapes what gets built, why math metaphors like fractals and Cantor’s diagonal matter, and how political work (prison abolition, No New Jails) links to tech. Gives concrete artifacts: implemented an esoteric language (2013), visualizer demoed and working (2018), rhyme generator using Allison Parrish’s pronouncing library. Mixes game clips, PCA/T-SNE ideas for political simulation, and personal history to justify the claims. Worth watching if concrete projects and tools matter to the decision.
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chapters (18)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:14Finding the joy and excitement
- 1:52Land acknowledgement
- 3:04Community acknowledgement
- 5:31Themes
- 12:29Digression: Alpha Centauri
- 18:22Digression: The 36 Lessons of Vivec
- 22:10Digression: infinities, countable and uncountable
- 25:05Interlude: Regret
- 29:44Interlude: Song of Healing
- 31:35The surprise of materiality
- 36:46Fractals
- 39:15The excitement of axiomatic theory and empirical practice
- 42:48The joy of community
- 43:31Self-review: generative-DOOM
- 44:17Dimensionality of veillance
- 45:04A political physics simulator
- 46:12Instead of a conclusion
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