Can we reclaim our attention from a world preoccupied by our data productivity?
Jenny Odell's book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, argues that reconnecting with our body and physical environment may be our most important form of resistance from society’s preoccupation with productivity.
Following a solo talk by Jenny Odell, she will be joined by AI expert Toby Walsh and ethical tech design researcher Emma A. Jane for a discussion on how we can resist the profit-driven tech landscape.
Presented with UNSW Sydney.
Jenny Odell (International)
Jenny Odell is the author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy and Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. She is also an interdisciplinary artist and has been in residence at the San Francisco Planning Department, Recology SF (otherwise known as the dump), and the Internet Archive. Odell taught digital art at Stanford University from 2013 to 2021. An enthusiast of birding, geology, and local history, she is based in Oakland, California.
Emma A. Jane (Australian)
Emma A. Jane – previously published as Emma Tom – is a writer and academic based at UNSW Sydney. Her research interests are eclectic and include: ethical tech design; artificial intelligence; sex and gender; LGBTQI+ issues; and wrangling super wicked problems in complex systems. Prior to her career in academia, Associate Professor Jane spent nearly 25 years working in the print, broadcast, and electronic media. Over the course of her working life, she has received multiple awards and prizes for her scholarly work, her journalism, and her fiction. Diagnosis Normal is her eleventh book.
Toby Walsh (Australian)
Toby Walsh is Chief Scientist of UNSW's new AI Institute. He is a strong advocate for limits to ensure AI improves our lives, having spoken at the UN, and to heads of state, parliamentary bodies, company boards and many others on this topic. This advocacy has led to him being ‘banned indefinitely’ from Russia. He was named on the international ‘Who's Who in AI’ list of influencers. His most recent book is Machines Behaving Badly: the morality of AI.
