Originally published in 4S Backchannels on 17th September 2021. By: Ranjit Singh and Rigoberto Lara Guzmán The possibilities of leveraging Big Data and AI-based interventions are often poised to flow as innovations that emerge from the Global North to the rest of the world. Such flows tend to position the Global North as the active center […]
Whose fault is it anyway?
“I do not understand why certain activists blame Aadhaar in this pension case. Aadhaar is designed to store only four data attributes about a person and their biometric information. It only guarantees uniqueness of their record with us. If you ask the database to confirm a person’s identity using their fingerprints, we only certify that […]
Action at a Distance
“Data collection always has errors. Spelling mistakes in names, wrong dates of birth, incorrect or makeshift addresses… the list can go on. The work is also so time-consuming that we have had to outsource it. So, there are new private sub-contracting agencies that also add to large-scale errors in data collection and curation. Language is […]
The Living Dead
“I once heard that you only die when no one remembers you anymore. But, death has many forms. I have thought about death a lot. I am an old man after all. I have lived an honest life; my family always had food on the plate when I could work. That’s the least I could […]
Faith
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 […]
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 […]