Technology, Culture, and Power Speaker Series: Anne L. Washington

Join Stanford PACS and the Cyber Policy Center for a monthly gathering that explores critical insights on the intersections and implications of technology and society. The Technology, Culture, and Power Speaker Series is a thought-provoking forum on the Stanford campus featuring leading experts and scholars examining the interactions of digital technologies, culture, and inequality.

Light refreshments will be served. Please arrive 5 minutes early to avoid disrupting the guest speaker.

Location:

Encina Commons, Room 119

Stanford University

615 Crothers Way, Stanford, CA 94305

We are joined by Dr. Anne L. Washington, Director of the Digital Interests Lab and Associate Professor of Data Policy at New York University to discuss how blockchain became social infrastructure. Blockchain has democratized administrative record-keeping, enabling anyone to become their own archival institution. Communities underserved by trusted authorities have embraced digital ledgers built on blockchain infrastructure, especially cryptocurrency. Yet, regulation of digital assets often overlooks these cases, marginalizing the financial needs and technical skills of these populations. Dr. Washington explores how exclusion from existing institutions has led some to claim that the mysterious inventor of bitcoin is female or that Satoshi is Black, and why open data systems thrive when institutions fail.

Dr. Anne L. Washington is director of the Digital Interests Lab and an Associate Professor of Data Policy at New York University. As a computer scientist and librarian trained in organizational ethnography, she views the impact of technology through the lens of administrative digital records. As a leading voice in scholarship on public interest technology, her writing focuses on widely shared technical infrastructures. In addition to generous international and domestic funding, the National Science Foundation has recognized her work multiple times including a NSF CAREER award on open data. She served on the ACM programming committees for EAMMO, JCDL, and FAACT and in 2020 she was co-chair for the ACM/AAAI AI, Ethics, and Society Conference (AIES). She has advised the White House, the Treasury, and the United Nations in addition to testifying before Congress on the ethics of artificial intelligence in financial services. Her most recent book, Ethical Data Science: Prediction in the Public Interest was published December 2023 by Oxford University Press.

Request disability accommodations and access information here.

This event is made possible with support from the Humanities Seed Grant from Stanford Public Humanities.

Host or Publisher Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society