The boy was restless. Final exams can be hard and he wanted to be sure that he would pass. His teachers always said to him, “You are not Einstein! But, you can manage. These tests are not so hard. If you just look at your books, or pay attention in remedial classes, you will be […]
Beyond Identification
Conference Panel Title: Beyond Identification: Biometrics, Everyday Life, and the State Panel Organizers: Michelle Spektor and Ranjit Singh Venue: 4S Conference in Boston, US Date: 2 September, 2016 Call for Papers: From unlocking personal smartphones and designing national IDs and passports, to conducting criminal investigations and verifying financial transactions, the use of fingerprints, facial recognition data, iris scans, and other […]
Travelling Numbers
Conference Presentation Title: Travelling Numbers: Tracing the transformations of Aadhaar Author: Ranjit Singh Panel: Infrastructures, subjects, politics Venue: 4S/EASST Conference in Barcelona, Spain Date: 3 September, 2016 Short Abstract: This paper traces the imbrication of India’s biometrics-based national identity number, Aadhaar, into various information infrastructures of social welfare delivery in India. Abstract: This paper traces the transformations of India’s biometrics-based national […]
Taste
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he […]
Sixth: In Praise of Janus
Have you ever wondered why Robert Frost chose the road less travelled? Maybe you belong to the camp that believes that Frost never actually took the road less travelled, he just chose one and then, valorized it later as being the road less travelled. Either way, the question here is of choice between two […]
Hearing
I am slowly losing it. I think that is why this memoir is doubly important. First, it is a snippet of a slowly fading experience. A part of a whole; something like the ruins of a civilization that lived centuries ago. Have you ever wondered how the discovery of a foundation buried deep beneath the […]
Dissertation as Parables
Workshop on ‘Making Stories: Dissertation as Parables‘ at the Northeast STS Graduate Student Conference – Making Do: Muddling Through to Dissertation (Troy: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 11-13 March 2016). Abstract: Dissertations are not just analytic accounts of an empirical case study that enable extensions of disciplinary knowledge. They are stories of struggle, making do, tinkering, and most of all an account […]