CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LAW AND GOVERNANCE
Jawaharlal Nehru University
SEMINAR SERIES
LEON MORENAS
Associate Professor of Architecture,
School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi.
On
Citizenship in the Age of Big Data
Abstract : This paper explores the relationship between citizenship and big data, drawing upon the Indian Supreme Court’s verdict that citizenship is not restricted to nationhood (in the sense of being a citizen of a country), but rather confers broader entitlements; critical among them, privacy. The smartphone is one among many (linked) devices through which our privacy is vitiated in the gathering—voluntary and involuntary—of our information by large corporations. While we revel in the perceived freedoms this gives us, corporations leverage our information for profit by aggregating it across sources. Once aggregated, this information is manipulable in alarming ways, as was demonstrated by the (ab)use of information in US elections, and various ‘poverty management’ applications seen globally. The aggregation of information into “stacks,” is the final point discussed in this presentation, with specific reference to India. Stacks enable the assimilation of horizontal and vertical technologies under the control of a narrow set of stakeholders, challenging the freedoms and entitlements of citizenship in vexed and irreversible ways.
3.00 PM, Thursday, 17 January 2019
Conference Room, CSLG, JNU
About the Speaker: Leon Morenas is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi. He is an architect with a Master’s in Urban Design from the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi and a PhD in Architectural Sciences—with a specialization in Informatics—from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York. Morenas’ research uses the disciplinary lens of science and technology studies to understand the relationship of technology with contemporary design, architecture and urban planning. He recently concluded a two year fellowship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla where he worked on a project entitled “Mohallas and Smart Cities: Post-Colonial Development in Delhi.” He was a World Social Sciences Fellow in Sustainable Urbanization (2014) and Programme Coordinator of the Masters in Social Design at Ambedkar University, Delhi (2013).
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