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Jennie Pakula's avatar

Sounds like an absolute joy! Isn’t it wonderful to have these serious adult conversations!

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Katy Barnett's avatar

It is the best. So fulfilling.

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Patrick Olivier's avatar

“too busy”

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Patrick Olivier's avatar

Oh, computing is the place to be if you are a second rate social science academic looking to write third rate social justice critiques of things you have no more than a coffee table book understanding of. And the poor computing scientists are clueless to respond as 95% don’t even have a philosophical grasp of what science and classical liberalism are, let alone post-modernism and critical social justice. The other 5% are to busy creating things.

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Katy Barnett's avatar

Oh dear. This I did not realise. I imagined it was all hard core computing stuff, but of course, you’d have all the ethics and social science stuff too.

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Patrick Olivier's avatar

I can relate as I’ve had a similar experience in the last 18 months. I’ve been doing less applied computing research in Australia and more in Malaysia and Indonesia. But in my case it’s not so much escaping political “right think” of mainstream conferences and my own institution (yes, even in computing), but that the academics, public services and NGOs I engage with in Malaysia and Indonesia don’t all see themselves as narrowly framed activists (as is the norm in Australia).

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Katy Barnett's avatar

YES. I totally get this. I can’t believe computing has “right think” but then I guess everything does in academia, these days.

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