Shreeharsh Kelkar

Margaret W. Rossiter, 81, Dies; Wrote Women Scientists Into History

Good to see the New York Times has a lengthy obituary for Margaret Rossiter

Data centers don't raise household water bills at all, anywhere A lot of journalism on AI's water impacts is misleading

This is an incredible deep dive into data centers and their water consumption. Lots of links that you can look into (though I didn't). The conclusion seems to be that data centers have to be treated like any other industrial center.

andymasley.substack.com/p/i-cant-fin...

I'm not sure that negates anything about the actual argument she makes in her piece. If anything, it shows even more why she's right about the importance of persuasion.

What I learned about productivity this year What I gave up, what I kept, and what's new. PLUS: How I'm using AI

Sentence of the day! "If I've learned one bitter lesson about this stuff over the years, it's that the best productivity hack in the world is simply liking your job."

Great post by @caseynewton.bsky.social with some new tools I hadn't heard of: www.platformer.news/productivity...

Of interest to my fellow BlueSky STS people: @castac.bsky.social @asaskat.bsky.social @labortechresearchnetwork.org @cstms.bsky.social And @asociologist.bsky.social @shobitap.org @lmesseri.bsky.social

My recommendation is that policy advocates should make a case for their policies by emphasizing value-tradeoffs. This is a much more honest way of making their case that also ensures that it does not get delegitimized down the line. It is more, dare I say it, … democratic.

In the UK’s health system, rationing isn’t a dirty word The UK has one of the most equitable health care systems in the world. Here’s how.

(2) plenty of policy frameworks can be expert-driven but still “democratic,” such Community Notes on Twitter designed entirely by programmers but still much beloved for its underlying values. Or the NHS's NICE committee that @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social wrote about here. www.vox.com/2020/1/28/21...

In this new post, I argue that (1) democracy is not about the public versus the experts; rather, it’s a shared culture of remaining open to different voices and causes (but without any guarantees that any cause will win out)

Rather, we have experts and regular people on ALL sides of an issue.

Advocates for policies and policy frameworks will often argue that their proposal is more “democratic” while the one they oppose is “technocratic.” But conflicts in many industrial societies today are NOT between publics on one side and experts on the other.

"Democracy" is not the opposite of "technocracy" Consulting regular people as opposed to experts does not make something more "democratic." Democracy is an ethos. Advocates should justify policy preferences by describing the value tradeoffs.

New post on my Substack about why the dichotomy between "democracy" and "technocracy" is a false one that is premised on a definition of "democracy" as public input as opposed to expert input. computingandsociety.substack.com/p/democracy-.... Thread below.

I forgot to thank you and Con for being such good stewards and editors! So, thank you to you both!

Very happy that "Just Code" is now published. It was a great journey from conference to book. I'm very happy to be among the company of all the writers in the anthology.

🦟 Can the Mosquito Bite? 🦟
The Multispecies Transmutation of Wolbachia Mosquitoes as Biotechnologies of Epidemic Control in Rio de Janeiro

How does the use of a bacterium in vector control reconfigure biopolitical relations?

New article at @estsjournal.bsky.social! #STSsky #AnthroSky

Would be curious to see other people's thoughts!

But calling everything "power" just confuses all the distinctions we should be making between institutions and different organizing machineries.

What is his contribution? It's that the essence of modernity is that science and scientific experts create what one might call the “organizing machinery” or dispositifs of daily life.

What was Michel Foucault guilty of? He neutered the word "power" of any analytical heft whatsoever. How to do a Foucaldian analysis: replace "power" with a technical term like "dispositif." Also, you must actually suggest an alternative organizing machinery to replace the dispositif you find unjust.

The problem with Michel Foucault's work: I wrote a post on my favorite philosopher explaining why his habit of calling his contribution as "power" makes the term "power" essentially meaningless. computingandsociety.substack.com/p/what-was-m...

E.g. I wrote a whole piece on *why* we have post-truth and most of its citations just say "we live in a post-truth age (five articles with the word post-truth in title including mine)." It may be the pressure of just having to cite something; it could also be that we produce too many papers.

I feel this is true of most citations; they may not be this egregious but most tend to be broad references to a topic rather than actually engaging with specific arguments of the papers.

I tried it once. I think it worked overall but I didn't do it again even though I love having everyone share one physical text. One thing I would change if I did it again would be to keep the number of pages on the lower side so that it's not too thick (and this also reduces its cost for students).

Thanks to @markfabian.bsky.social for interviewing me. It was really fun to talk about my research. In the interview, I expand on what happened to MOOCs, how they became domesticated in that the wild hopes associated with them (access, big data!) abated but some concrete gains remained.

Will EdTech change the university? - ePODstemology Dr Shreeharsh Kelkar from UC Berkeley on to discuss massive online open courses or “MOOCs” and other varieties of education technology. Are they destined to displace the traditional university, or are...

New episode of ePODstemology!

@shreeharsh.bsky.social from Berkeley is on to discuss EdTech like MOOCs (remember those?), how it has evolved, and what effect it might have on the university of the future!

www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/epis...

But hopefully, this also means in the long run the importance of courts will decline and policy negotiations will be resolved through political channels rather than by suing each other.

That's a great point! I think the US is unusual among developed countries in the deference given to the courts and how much of a role courts play in adversarial policy negotiations so of course, strangely enough, here they are now as well.

Of interest to: @kevincarey1.bsky.social @mmasnick.bsky.social @castac.bsky.social @geomblog.bsky.social @caseynewton.bsky.social @asaskat.bsky.social @lmesseri.bsky.social

I would be curious about comments from people who have explored this technology in depth or have thoughts on the logic of collective action and standardization here.

I suspect also that watermarking doesn't make the cut because of progressives’ fundamental aversion to a solution that involves policing and enforcement. But policing and enforcement can actually lead to better assignments and more learning!

I wonder why there isn’t more discussion of this among instructors within universities where the conversation around ChatGPT often drifts to questions around the evilness of AI companies or about the different schools of pedagogy.

This is a pedagogy-agnostic solution that would be laser-focused on the university’s main mission, teaching. It's a win for instructors who want to preserve more traditional assignments, for those who wish to incorporate LLMs into assignments, and also for AI companies.