Dec 27, 2021How learning to code saved meIt made me realise that learning a new skill to impress potential future employers is an utter waste of time — I was a practicing artist for nearly a decade. Except I wasn’t; I think art and ‘being an artist’ as many loose definitions, but personally one thing must remain true if you want to call yourself an artist: you actually have to make art. When I worked as a human…Work6 min readWork6 min read
Published in Moral Imaginations·Jun 22, 2021Beyond thinking: using feeling and imagination to make sense of the worldUnderstanding complex systems is hard; why not expand your toolkit? — Hello readers — I’m Georgia, Writer-in-Residence at Moral Imaginations, here to help you make sense of the work they are doing. In this piece I will be covering Phoebe’s recent talk at The Stoa, and serving up the themes and ideas for your ravenous brains to devour. Firstly, sense-making. What is that? Let’s start as…Systems Thinking6 min readSystems Thinking6 min read
Aug 28, 2020The new wave of virtue signalling in the wake of world-wide protestsFrom Amazon’s facial recognition moratorium to the rejection of Chinese apps: why are Big Tech and nation states alike withholding services? — This piece was originally published in Issue 2 of GDFC Mag; a magazine run by Goal Diggers FC, a London-based football club for women and non-binary folk. On the 17th of June 2020, aljazeera.com reported that there were 20 Indian soldiers killed in a violent skirmish against China, due to…BlackLivesMatter7 min readBlackLivesMatter7 min read
Aug 18, 2020Member-onlyI’ve been writing about data privacy for over a year. Here’s what I’ve learnedPrivacy is too big to understand. But do all of us really need to understand it? — It’s boring, abstract, and honestly ‘privacy’ isn’t even the right word. After being immersed in the data privacy space for a solid year, I’ve noticed some common themes in rhetoric and attitudes — as well as problems where there still aren’t solutions, and summarised these into five main points: 1. No one cares about privacyPrivacy6 min readPrivacy6 min read
Jun 19, 2020There are no good uses for facial recognitionMy likeness doesn’t belong to anyone but me — stop turning it into data — Picture this: you’re a delivery person going door to door dropping off packages. You’re over-worked and under-paid. You arrive at a house and ring the doorbell. You wait patiently for someone to answer. Everything is normal. Oh, except: you’ve just been profiled on a facial recognition database owned by Amazon…Amazon5 min readAmazon5 min read
May 7, 2020The NHSX contact tracing app has nothing to do with contact tracingInstead the UK government are working with Faculty to create a comprehensive social graph — Today NHSX, the digital arm of the NHS, are piloting their contact tracing app in the Isle of Wight. Before we dive in to the privacy concerns I would like to point out that the app itself is shoddy — it will not work properly as a contact tracing app…Covid-195 min readCovid-195 min read
May 6, 2020Not only is the UK contact tracing app a privacy nightmare — it also just won’t workIsn’t it funny that this whole time, we weren’t aware that the UK government could do a better job than Google and Apple combined? — Okay just for a second imagine that this whole Coronavirus thing doesn’t exist, and that you get to be an early adopter of a cool new app. As an early adopter of this app, you get to choose: ☝️OPTION ONE: the app will be built by both Google and Apple…Google5 min readGoogle5 min read
Dec 18, 2019Privacy is not a feature, it’s a necessityHere’s how Big Tech’s main players are getting their privacy messaging wrong… — When the GDPR bomb finally dropped in 2018, there was a desperate scramble among Big Tech companies — whose business models revolve around the exploitation of user data — to make some changes. But are these changes only cosmetic? This falls under what I like to call the privacy promise…Privacy6 min readPrivacy6 min read
Dec 6, 2019The fight for our health dataHealth data is arguably the most valuable data we have — which is why companies want it — We all know that there’s a lot of money in health, because humans have frail, sensitive bodies which are prone to disease and ageing — all of us need to access healthcare at various stages all through our lives. But what kind of world are we walking into when Google…Healthcare5 min readHealthcare5 min read
Dec 4, 2019You will never value data as much as Big TechThe current rhetoric is that data privacy is something you should care about — but in order to truly keep data private, you actually have to value it. — Earlier this year, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had his Twitter account hacked into via SIM swapping. How did this happen? Because SIM swapping is extremely easy: all it takes is one phone call to the victim’s mobile carrier, to request they move their number over to a new sim. Once…Privacy5 min readPrivacy5 min read
