Publications

We investigate cybersecurity toolkits, collections of public facing materials intended to help users achieve security online. Through a qualitative analysis of 41 online toolkits, we present a set of key design dimensions: agentive scale (who is responsible for security), achievability (can security be achieved), and interventional stage (when are security measures taken). Recognizing toolkits…

This paper examines the history of the learning theory "constructionism" and its most well-known implementation, Logo, to examine beliefs involving both "C's" in CSCW: computers and cooperation. Tracing the tumultuous history of one of the first examples of computer-supported cooperative learning (CSCL) allows us to question some present-day assumptions regarding the universal appeal of…

We introduce a model which combines principles from psychometric and connectionist paradigms to allow direct Q-matrix refinement via backpropagation. We call this model dAFM, based on augmentation of the original Additive Factors Model (AFM), whose calculations and constraints we show can be exactly replicated within the framework of neural networks. In order to parameterize the Q-matrix…

The behavior of a differentially private system is governed by a parameter epsilon which sets a balance between protecting the privacy of individuals and returning accurate results. While a system owner may use a number of heuristics to select epsilon, existing techniques may be unresponsive to the needs of the users who's data is at risk. A promising alternative is to allow users to express…

Search engines no longer merely shape public understanding and access to the content of the World Wide Web: they shape public understanding of the world. Search engine results produced by secret, corporate-curated “search scripts” of algorithmic and human activity influence societies’ understanding of history, and current events. Society’s growing reliance on online platforms for information…

While scholars have critically examined the discourse that ‘hacking’ and ‘making’ are empowering practices of individualized technological production and innovation, these stories have largely retained American cultural assumptions. Drawing from fieldwork in Bangladesh, Taiwan, Vietnam, Paraguay, and China, we discuss making and hacking via alternate sociocultural histories, visions, and…

In this chapter we analyze the rhetorical work of speculative design methods to advance third wave agendas in HCI. We contrast the history of speculative design that is often cited in HCI papers from the mid 2000s onward that frames speculative design as a critical methodological intervention in HCI linked to radical art practice and critical theory, with the history of how speculative design…

In this paper, we use design fiction to explore the social implications for adoption of brain-computer interfaces (BCI). We argue that existing speculations about BCIs are incomplete: they discuss fears about radical changes in types of control, at the expense of discussing more traditional types of power that emerge in everyday experience, particularly via labor. We present a design fiction…

Privacy policies are critical to understanding one's rights on online platforms, yet few users read them. In this pictorial, we approach this as a systemic issue that is part a failure of interaction design. We provided a variety of people with printed packets of privacy policies, aiming to tease out this form's capabilities and limitations as a design interface, to understand people's…

This article reconsiders the concept of digital inequality drawing from recent developments in science and technology studies, including evolving theories of materiality (Barad, 2003; Bennett, 2010; Ingold, 2012), work on critical media infrastructures (Parks and Starosielski, 2015), and on maintenance and repair (Jackson, 2014; Edgerton, 2007). New ways of thinking about the material world…

This special theme contextualizes, examines, and ultimately works to dispel the feelings of “sublime”—of awe and terror that overrides rational thought—that much of the contemporary public discourse on algorithms encourages. Employing critical, reflexive, and ethnographic techniques, these authors show that while algorithms can take on a multiplicity of different cultural meanings, they…

Maintaining the privacy of one’s personal information—one’s choice of when to disclose it and to whom, how one maintains control over it, and the risks of disclosure—is one of the most important social issues of the internet era. For the past decade, privacy researchers have focused on several domains, including: documenting public opinion about privacy attitudes and expectations;…

The creators of technical infrastructure are under social and legal pressure to comply with expectations that can be difficult to translate into computational and business logics. This dissertation bridges this gap through three projects that focus on privacy engineering, information security, and data economics, respectively. These projects culminate in a new formal…

The passage of China’s national cybersecurity law in June 2017 has been interpreted as an unprecedented impediment to the operation of foreign firms in the country, with its new requirements for data localization, network operators’ cooperation with law enforcement officials, and online content restrictions, among others. Although the law’s scope is indeed broader than that of any previous…

A system, method and non-transitory computer readable medium for detecting unsecured sensors in a network. A computing system can find an IP address associated with an unsecured sensor based on a port through which the unsecured sensor communicates with the network. The computing system can ascertain a prefix route associated with the IP address for the unsecured sensor based on a portion of…

Of the many problems faced by the field of information security, two are particularly pressing: cooperation and learning. To effectively respond to threats and vulnerabilities, information security practitioners must cooperate to securely share sensitive information and coordinate responses across organizational and territorial boundaries. Yet there are insufficient numbers of personnel who…

This essay explores the changing significance of gender in fiction, asking especially whether its prominence in characterization has varied from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first. We have reached two conclusions, which may seem in tension with each other. The first is that gender divisions between characters have become less sharply marked over the last 170…

Although "privacy by design" (PBD) — embedding privacy protections into products during design, rather than retroactively —uses the term "design" to recognize how technical design choices implement and settle policy, design approaches and methodologies are largely absent from PBD conversations. Critical, speculative, and value-centered design approaches can be used to elicit reflections on…

Blockchain is viewed by many as big as, or even bigger than, the development of the Internet. Blockchain technology and its applications have been evolving rapidly. A number of factors have contributed to both the advancement of this technology and the quick build-out and iteration of applications in financial services and other industries. This chapter will provide a survey of key activities…