I agree with your last point. Drafting the grant application process is probably equally important as the project itself, largely because it sets the public atmosphere and tone for the entire study. Also it is at this point that I think we can bring in a lot of mistakes of biases, as often times we need to appeal to the grant offices’ biases to…[Read more]

I really like your point: “Is it fair to automatically say that by involving an Indigenous scholar, it is authentic?” Oftentimes, we imagine that we are being inclusive by including marginalized people into these projects and social activities, but many times these initiatives ring hollow because they don’t go as far as to bring in new…[Read more]

I couldn’t agree with you more on your last point that these digital tools can help propel our research efforts forward, especially as they can help direct us to analyze questions and points of interest that we may have not been able to notice before. I think that “distant” reading will become more and more relevant as the volumes of texts for…[Read more]

This was my first experience of ever walking into a prison (both active and defunct), and I also felt much of the same things that you mentioned up there. A lot of times its very easy to ignore the fact that prisoners and ex-convicts are fundamentally humans who are and were in need of help. That is why sometimes I think a large number of people…[Read more]

Thanks for the post, Ethan. I enjoyed reading it. I really like your point that Google’s efforts to “democratize” knowledge is an effort between altruism and technology-driven capitalism. They no doubt have the best interests as a firm to optimize their chances of increasing their wealth via expanding databases on human languages with hopes to…[Read more]

Your writing of “Power can be productive, but it can also be subtracting by removing the ability to do something,” reminded me of a recent video I watched in which a famous author had published a book questioning the current economic system that favors the rich. There he writes about how technology is being used to make people “unfree” in which…[Read more]