PhD student, Oregon State University
Platypod Producer, Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
About Ana Carolina
Ana is a doctoral student in anthropology at Oregon State University, working with cultures of computing and producing knowledge at the intersection of anthropology and Science and Technology Studies (STS). Her research interests include artificial intelligence, digital and data-driven technologies, and their makers in the US context.
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Contributions to Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
View all of Ana Carolina's posts on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.
The Brilliant Future of AI
On a hot August afternoon in 2018, I attended a public lecture on AI and the future of work, broadly defined. Back then, I was a student in Brazil conducting my fieldwork for my master’s thesis in anthropology, and interested in understanding artificial intelligence (AI) representations in Brazilian media. As such, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork at events and talks in Computer Science and other departments at my university (Universidade Federal de Goiás, UFG) and carried out archival research of media stories about AI written in Portuguese. In this post, I retell a field story to reflect on what I noticed has changed when it comes to discussions around AI and the future of work in popular media since then. (more…) (read more...)
2023 in Review
Welcome to CASTAC 2023 in review! In this post you will read about the wonderful work that our CASTAC team and community has put together. We thank you for engaging with our content this year and hope you will continue to do so in 2024. Without further ado, let’s get started with our annual review. (more…) (read more...)
Platypod, Episode Eight: CASPR 2023
Download the full transcript of this episode. The 2023 edition of CASPR: CASTAC in the Spring discussed digital ethnography and its multiple facets. The event was moderated by Dr. Baird Campbell, who, along with guest speakers Dr. Ilana Gershon, Dr. Nicole Taylor, and Dr. Patricia G. Lange, shared their experiences and valuable insights based on their many years of interactions with digital ethnography—much before the recent spike in interest in this method due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some critical insights from the event: On the online-offline divide, guest-speakers pointed out that this division will not matter in the future as interlocutors are increasingly interconnected. Speakers were skeptical about how much this topic still matters now, coming to the conclusion that this separation is largely artificial. The speakers mentioned how digital technologies, social media platforms, and other technological products would indirectly be part of future ethnographies, even if the researcher had (read more...)