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Movie & Book Recommendations

Since Responsible IT covers a broad array of topics, our department wishes to provide youwith some pieces of media that look at this subject through different lenses. Whether you arejust starting to get acquainted with the field or are already a professional, theserecommendations will hopefully help you explore new facets of technology and ethics.

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Movies

  • The Social Dilemma (2020) is a documentary-drama hybridthat looks under thehood of social media, observing its intrusive design and the impact it has on both theindividual and society at large. (1h 34min)

  • Coded Bias (2020) is a documentary that tackles algorithmicalbias, particularly withrespect to facial recognition technologies. (1h 30min)

  • The Cleaners (2018) is a documentary dealing withcontent moderation on theinternet, from the people who are poorly paid to do it to those who make the rulesand profit off of their work. (1h 30min)

  • The Great Hack (2019) is a documentary that uncoversthe Facebook-CambridgeAnalytica data scandal and its connection to various political campaigns worldwide.(2h 19min)

Books

A Bit of Everything

  • The Ethical Algorithm (Michael Kearns, Aaron Roth) discusses concepts like privacy, fairness and game theory and how these can be represented in the algorithms governing our everyday life. It does not shy away from delving into the more technical side, occasionally showcasing diagrams and formulas, while remaining accessible. (232 pages)

  • Future Ethics (Cennydd Bowles) ties philosophical concepts such as utilitarian ethics, deontological ethics, virtue ethics to designing modern technology and comes up with practical examples and advice that embody these principles. (228 pages)

  • Cloud Ethics: Algorithms and the Attributes of Ourselves and Others (Louise Amoore) is a more philosophical take on how machine learning algorithms change the social fabric of our society. It also puts forth an approach to ensuring accountability for the algorithms’ decisions. (232 pages)

Feminism/Equality/Civil Rights

  • Data Feminism (Catherine D’Ignazio) presents a new way of looking at data science (and all its implicit processes, like data collection, cleaning and analysis), through the lens of intersectional feminism. (328 pages)

  • Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (Caroline Criado Pérez) is a comprehensive analysis into the gender bias a

  • Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (Ruha Benjamin) explores how technology can perpetuate a newer, more subversive form of racism and increase social inequity. (172 pages)

AI

  • Atlas of AI (Kate Crawford), as its name suggests, examines the impact AI has on various aspects of life, from the environment, to labor, politics and the human psyche, to name a few. (288 pages)

  • Creating Trustworthy AI - Mozilla Whitepaper delves into the challenges posed by emerging AI technologies (such as monopoly, data privacy, bias and discrimination) and points out potential solutions. (69 pages)

Design

  • User Friendly (Cliff Kuang, Robert Fabricant) extends beyond the scope of responsible IT and spans the history of design in general (not necessarily digital). However, it also tackles the design of modern day software applications and discusses its ethically problematic aspects. (416 pages)

  • The Ethical Design Handbook (Trine Falbe, Kim Anderson, Martin Michael Frederiksen) provides guidelines for approaching the design of digital products from a more ethically-aware standpoint. (368 pages)

  • Other resources on sustainable design can be found at https://sustainablewebdesign.org/, with a focus on web design.

Privacy and Democracy

  • Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (Zeynep Tufekci) zooms in on the implications of using the internet to organize protests, by providing real-life examples and leveraging the author’s own experience. (326 pages)

  • How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism reads as a longer essay that examines the history of digital rights, along with the user data harvesting done by tech giants and, more importantly, how it could be stopped. (146 pages)

  • Privacy Is Hard and Seven Other Myths: Achieving Privacy Through Careful Design (Cory Doctorow) debunks common myths surrounding privacy and explores the idea of building software systems with privacy in mind. It also provides methods that could enable this process. (280 pages)

  • Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (Cathy O'Neil) examines various mathematical models governing different aspects of today’s world, exposing their flaws and potential for harm. (259 pages)

  • Ik weet je wachtwoord (Daniël Verlaan) is the result of an investigative journalist’s foray into the darker sides of technology. It presents numerous stories of digital criminals, while also providing useful tips for protecting oneself. Currently, it is only available in Dutch. (347 pages)