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Humans as software extensions

Will You Be My Plugin?

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Video duration
00:26:30
Language
English
Abstract
While technology is often described as an extension of our bodies, this talk will explore a reversed relationship: Bodies and minds of digital laborers (you and me and basically everybody else) as software extensions that can be easily plugged in, rewired, and discarded. I will approach this topic from an artist's point of view.

From CAPTCHAS as micro jobs for training AI to people having to pretend to be bots, from gig work to APIs for programming people – we are extending computational systems by offering our bodies, our senses, and our cognition.

To some degree, this has been true for most kind of work for a long time. However, with software creeping into every aspect of our lives, and with algorithmic systems modulating and optimizing flows constantly, being plugged in and then generating data, or being modulated by data analysis, has become ubiquitous (workers never leaving the factory?).

In this talk, I will address the condition of being a software extension within the framework of my artistic practice and research by introducing artworks and discussing e.g. the survival creativity of gig workers on hyper-competitive online platforms; the surveilled workplace; AI as a global assembly line.

Against this backdrop, I will also speculate about possible interventions inside these environments.

Talk ID
9077
Event:
34c3
Day
2
Room
Saal Dijkstra
Start
7:45 p.m.
Duration
00:30:00
Track
Art & Culture
Type of
lecture
Speaker
Sebastian Schmieg
Talk Slug & media link
34c3-9077-humans_as_software_extensions

Talk & Speaker speed statistics

Very rough underestimation:
128.0 wpm
731.2 spm
133.7 wpm
761.5 spm
100.0% Checking done100.0%
0.0% Syncing done0.0%
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Talk & Speaker speed statistics with word clouds

Whole talk:
128.0 wpm
731.2 spm
Sebastian Schmieg:
133.7 wpm
761.5 spm