Ron Eglash

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Michigan

Search engine algorithms are increasingly subjects of critique, with evidence indicating their role in driving polarization, exclusion, and algorithmic social harms. Many proposed solutions take a top-down approach, with experts proposing bias-corrections. A more participatory approach may be possible, with those made vulnerable by algorithmic unfa...

Search engine algorithms are increasingly subjects of critique, with evidence indicating their role in driving polarization, exclusion, and algorithmic social harms. Many proposed solutions take a top-down approach, with experts proposing bias-corrections. A more participatory approach may be possible, with those made vulnerable by algorithmic unfa...

The Kongo cosmogram--typically portrayed as the axial alignment of a “+” sign--has been a central focus for the interpretation of visual patterns created by enslaved Africans and their descendents in the Americas. But many of these patterns are not a crossing of vertical and horizontal lines. They are, rather, diagonal lines. This makes sense in li...

One of the challenges facing AI governance is the need for multiple scales. Universal human rights require a global scale. If someone asks AI if education is harmful to women, the answer should be “no” regardless of their location. But economic democratization requires local control: if AI’s power over an economy is dictated by corporate giants or...

In African traditions, the crossroads is where the trickster makes his/her appearance. Eshu, Legba, Anansi and others create complexity when our decisions fold back on themselves. AI has created yet another crossroads, and again the trickster brings surprises. What might have seemed like Africa’s worst challenges-“underdeveloped” from the colonial...

The Latin roots of the word reparations are "re" (again) plus "parere" which means "to give birth to, bring into being, pro-duce". Together they mean "to make generative once again". In this sense, the extraction processes that cause labor injustice, ecological devastation, and social degradation cannot be repaired by simply transferring money. Rep...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be a threat to creative arts and design, taking data and images without permission or compensation. But with AI becoming a global portal for human knowledge access, anyone resisting inclusion in its data inputs will become invisible to its outputs. This is the AI double bind, in which the threat of exclusion forces...

This paper analyzes interviews with African American women cosmetologists who collaborated in designing and implementing a series of community-centered science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education programs to support broadening the participation of Black children in those fields. These collaborations used technologies and medi...

In his creation of ethnomathematics, and in my own development of ethnocomputing, both D’Ambrosio and I placed a similar emphasis on human knowledge. We did so because that was what colonialism’s primitivist framing of Indigenous culture denied. If we had stressed the ways that human and natural agency were intertwined, it would have diminished the...

The dangers of bias in AI and other data-intensive information sciences have been well documented. But an exclusive focus on “bias” is not enough, we need to be both anti-bias and, simultaneously, create transformative change. What is the difference? If we focus exclusively on eliminating bias, we imply that if only the bias would vanish, we would...

Transformative improvements require systemic change in an economy marked by extreme wealth inequality, stratified by geography, identity, and other social markers. In this chapter, we seek to raise awareness in the technology, design, and scientific communities of the long history of artisans—skilled, independent labor striving to keep a relatively...

The pressures that create current social and environmental disasters—global warming, wealth inequality, racism, misogyny, and war, to name a few—are daunting to contemplate. It seems foolish to think that something as small and fragile as a plant could oppose them. But plants and humans synergistically working together—what we will refer to as phyt...

The term “freethinking” originated in the 17th century to describe inquiry into beliefs which were accepted unquestioningly. Feminists such as Mary Wolstonecraft, abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, and novelists such as Mark Twain and Zora Neal Hurston are among the many who dared to simultaneously challenge religious dogma, patriarchal convent...

Extractive economies alienate value from those who generate it. But the development of a generative economy-one that maintains value in unalienated forms, and circulates rather than extracts-requires more than simply establishing "openness". This paper examines the spectrum between fully open and accessible technologies, and those that are strictly...

Long before the internet provided us with a networked digital system, music exchanges had created a global networked analog system, built of recordings, radio broadcasts, and live performance. The features that allowed some audio formations to go viral, while others failed, fall at the intersection of three domains: access, culture, and cognition....

Examples of the cosmolocal tempt us to make a wish list: we want solar over fossil fuels, civic engagement instead of mass media, worker ownership replacing corporations, and so on. But wish lists are vulnerable to appropriation: you can hear words like “sustainable” and “empowerment” throughout corporate propaganda. Wish lists are also poor at ada...

Students' lives, both in and out of school, are full of different forms of value. Wealthy students enjoy value in the form of financial capital; their fit to hegemonic social practices; excellent health care and so on. Low-income students, especially those from African American, Native American, and Latinx communities, often lack access to those re...

Inequity and social injustice are omnipresent wicked problems, complex challenges for which there are no single solutions due to their cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary, and systemic nature. For example, the 'green revolution' of the 1970s was supposed to solve world hunger. However, we saw a rise in corporate control over agriculture (Pielke and...

Extrapolation from low-fidelity design iterations to higher fidelity extrapolation is developed using insights from cognitive multimedia learning theory for accounting for the effect especially critical in HRI. An initial proposal for low-fidelityto higher fidelity extrapolation is developed using insights fromcognitive multimedia learning theory t...

Extrapolation from low-fidelity design iterations is especially critical in HRI. An initial proposal for low-fidelity to higher fidelity extrapolation is developed using insights from cognitive multimedia learning theory to account for the effects of prototype medium and three types of cognitive demands. Inspired by Donald Norman and others, our pr...

The food system in the US has supported growing dominance of industrial agriculture, corporate distribution chains, and other means by which power is exerted at the expense of environmental sustainability, citizen health and wealth inequality. Economic impacts have been most damaging to low resourced and racialized communities. Online purchasing cr...

The economy for artisanal products, such as Navajo rugs or Pashmina shawls are often threatened by mass-produced fakes. We propose the use of AI-based authentication as one part of a larger system that would replace extractive economies with generative circulation. In this case study we examine initial experiments towards the development of a cell...

Culturally responsive computing (CRC) frames the localized knowledges and practices of Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities as assets for working toward racial justice in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). A key part of CRC is the role that local communities play in designing and/or implementing curricula and technologies...

Background: As teachers work to broaden the participation of racially and ethnically underrepresented groups in computer science (CS), culturally responsive computing (CRC) becomes more pertinent to formal settings. Objective: Yet, equity-oriented literature offers limited guidance for developing deep forms of CRC in the classroom. In response, we...

The economy for artisanal products such as Navajo rugs or Pashmina shawls are often threatened by mass-produced fakes. We propose the use of AI-based authentication as one part of a larger system that would replace extractive economies with generative circulation. In this case study, we examine initial experiments towards the development of a cell...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to eliminate millions of jobs, from finance to truck driving. But artisanal products (e.g., handmade textiles) are valued precisely because of their human origins, and thus have some inherent “immunity” from AI job loss. At the same time, artisanal labor, combined with technology, could potentially help to dem...

The economy for artisanal products such as Navajo rugs or Pashmina shawls are often threatened by mass-produced fakes. We propose the use of AI-based authentication as one part of a larger system that would replace extractive economies with generative circulation. In this case study we examine initial experiments towards the development of a cell p...

This paper describes a decolonial perspective on material agency in the context of STEM education and application. Using the framework of generative STEM, we engaged in case studies with African, African American, South American, and Native American educational communities. This research shows that understanding material agency based on Indigenous...

Removing racial bias from algorithms or social process is necessary, but alone it is insufficient. The "bias" framework tends to treat race as unwanted noise; best when suppressed or eliminated. This attitude extends to classrooms, where an attempt to be "colorblind" leads to what Pollock calls "colormute"; fearful of even mentioning race. Just as...

In the U.S. there are steady efforts by governmental and philanthropic organizations to increase the representation of students of colour in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). After years of mixed results, researchers and educators have started to question one size fits all notions of broadening participation. An increasing n...

In this essay I will employ Haraway’s entangled thread metaphor as a meta-method; a means to trace the intricate and profound analysis she and her companion species have used to navigate the intersections of social justice, technoscience and earthly survival. Although in her earliest invocation the image represents following an analysis through a s...

This paper introduces a generative framework in which translations of Indigenous knowledge systems can expand student agency in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Students move from computer simulations to physical renderings, to repurposing STEM innovation and discovery in the service of Indigenous community development. We...

Most social studies of science and technology have focused on either production by established professionals, or the impact on the general public. But what about the lay public as producers of technology and science? From the vernacular engineering of Latino car design to environmental analysis among rural women, groups outside the centers of scien...

Using two case studies I map out intellectual genealogies in which generative frameworks—portraits of life’s flourishing as open, hybridizing, and self-transforming--emerged in the exchanges between anti-racists and the scientific community. The first case is a detailed look at the exchanges between abolitionists and scientists: Frederick Douglass,...

Extractive economies pull value from a system without restoring it. Unsustainable extraction of ecological value includes over-fishing, clear-cut logging, etc. Extraction of labor value is similarly objectionable: assembly line jobs for example increase the likelihood of cardiovascular disease, depression, suicide and other problems. Extraction of...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to eliminate millions of jobs, from finance to truck driving. But artisanal products-(e.g. handmade textiles) are valued precisely because of their human origins, and thus have some inherent "immunity" from AI job loss. At the same time, artisanal labor, combined with technology, could potentially help to demo...

Artifcial intelligence (AI) is poised to eliminate millions of jobs, from fnance to truck driving. But artisanal products (e.g., handmade textiles) are valued precisely because of their human origins, and thus have some inherent “immunity” from AI job loss. At the same time, artisanal labor, combined with technology, could potentially help to democ...

Recent scholarship in computer science (CS) education shifts from a focus on the technical-cognitive skills of computational thinking to the socio-cultural goal of computational participation, often illustrated as remixing popular media (e.g. music, photos, etc.) in online communities. These activities do enhance the participatory dimensions of CS,...

Broadening the participation of underrepresented students in computer science fields requires careful design and implementation of culturally responsive curricula and technologies. Culturally Situated Design Tools (CSDTs) address this by engaging students in historic, cultural, and meaningful design projects based on community practices. To date, C...

Decolonizing Digital Fabrication: Case Studies in Generative Justice Why do pressing social problems-environmental degradation, labor insecurity, ethnic and gender inequality, and so on-look so much alike in both capitalist and communist societies? Systems designed to extract value-whether delivered to private corporations or centralized states-are...

Whether value is extracted for redistribution by a communist state, or extracted for purposes of private enterprise, the problem is in the extraction, which is strongly influenced by the engineering design. A generative approach to engineering would maintain value in unalienated forms, and allow it to circulate such that it returns to the communiti...

With even the most trivial of applications now being written on top of millions of lines code of libraries, API's, and programming languages, much of the complexity that used to exist when designing software has been abstracted away to allow programmers to focus on primarily business logic. With each application relying so heavily on the ecosystem...

Bottom-up technosocial innovations such as open-source software, makerspaces, DIY bio, urban agriculture, commons-based governance, and other forms in which value is circulated in unalienated form, rather than extracted and alienated from its generators, have created new possibilities for social justice and sustainability. This essay explores Afric...

Como a matemática pode melhor contribuir para a justiça social e a sustentabilidade? A justiça distributiva aborda a pobreza e os problemas relacionados de cima para baixo: movendo o valor extraído da propriedade privada para a propriedade estatal. Mas, a história do socialismo burocrático, da poluição na URSS à escassez de alimentos na Venezuela,...

Explorations of science, technology, and innovation in Africa not as the product of “technology transfer” from elsewhere but as the working of African knowledge. In the STI literature, Africa has often been regarded as a recipient of science, technology, and innovation rather than a maker of them. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines...

The fusion of sports and analytics has not only revolutionized the way professional basketball is played, coached, and managed; it also has the potential to revolutionize the way we educate the next generation. Sports analytics can provide a rigorous, yet tangible application of math and statistics in which youth perform data gathering and analysis...

Marx proposed that capitalism’s destructive force is caused, at root, by the alienation of labor value from its generators. Environmentalists have added the concept of unalienated ecological value, and rights activists added the unalienated expressive value of free speech, sexuality, spirituality, etc. Marx’s vision for restoring an unalienated wor...

The " pipeline " model of STEM education conceives of underrepresentation by race, gender and class in terms of leaks that fail to deliver students to their destination in the science and technology workforce. But that model fails to consider the role of STEM in producing underrepresentation. This can only be solved by moving from the extractive ap...

The purpose of this study was to develop and deploy a low cost vertical jump platform using readily available materials for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and outreach in the inner city. The platform was used to measure the jumping ability of participants to introduce students to the collection and analysis of sc...

In Marxist frameworks “distributive justice” depends on extracting value through a centralized state. Many new social movements—peer to peer economy, maker activism, community agriculture, queer ecology, etc.—take the opposite approach, keeping value in its unalienated form and allowing it to freely circulate from the bottom up. Unlike Marxism, the...

Ethnocomputing is the study of the intersections between culture and computing. In addition to cultural analysis of computing, it also utilizes computing to model artifacts or practices from a given culture. In this essay, we consider three modes of modeling. In the first mode, the knowledge flow is unidirectional: the researcher analyzes indigenou...

The race and gender gap in US STEM education achievement reflects the legacy of historical forces which include colonialism and the exclusion of women in higher education. But it also reflects the decontextualized character of standard educational forms. We report on cSELF (Computer Science Education from Life), an intervention which brings togethe...

As more curricula integrate computational thinking, designing assessments that are compatible with both student engagement and educator efficacy becomes more urgent. In this paper we discuss the potential role of complexity metrics as an aide to assessing student comprehension. In this first stage of the research, we examined the relationship betwe...

The phrase "broadening participation" is often used to describe efforts to decrease the race and gender gap in science and engineering education, and in this paper the authors describe an educational program focused on addressing the lower achievement rates and career interests of underrepresented ethnic groups African American, Native American, an...

Increasing the numbers of black, latino and native youth in STEM careers is both an important way to reduce poverty in low income communities, and a contribution to the diversity of thought and experience that drives STEM research. But underrepresented youth are often alienated from STEM. Two new forms of social capital have been identified that ca...

This paper details the development and evaluation of software that allows middle school students to explore the mathematical aspects of Ghanaian Adinkra symbols. We tested the effectiveness of this simulation in a Ghanaian junior high school by conducting a randomized quasi-experiment. We begin this paper by framing culturally responsive math educa...

div> This paper details the development and evaluation of software that allows middle school students to explore the mathematical aspects of Ghanaian Adinkra symbols. We tested the effectiveness of this simulation in a Ghanaian junior high school by conducting a randomized quasi-experiment. We begin this paper by framing culturally responsive math...

Shape Shifting is the practice of a landscape by which it preserves and changes simultaneously. Shape Shifting is a film as well, akin to a living territory, both build themselves in response to a broader environment by transforming their internal composition. Being a landscape, or drawing a cartography of a landscape is to developan attentiveness...

Kelty’s “recursive public” is defined as a binary: whether or not ownership of intellectual property is legally in the public domain. We propose a broader continuum of recursive depth, which spans the range from shallow constrained generative spaces (e.g., photo memes) to the deeply open collaborations of “criticalmaking” communities. Recursive dep...

It has long been known that dynamic systems typically tend towards some state – an “attractor” – into which they finally settle. The introduction of chaos theory has modified our understanding of these attractors: we no longer think of the final “resting state” as necessarily being at rest. In this essay we consider the attractors of social ecologi...

The phrase "broadening participation" is often used to describe efforts to decrease the race and gender gap in science and engineering education, and in this paper the authors describe an educational program focused on addressing the lower achievement rates and career interests of underrepresented ethnic groups (African American, Native American, a...

The academic performance and engagement of youth from under-represented ethnic groups (African American, Latino, and Indigenous) in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) show statistically large gaps in comparison with their White and Asian peers. Some of these differences can be attributed to the direct impact of economic forces...

Improving academic success and social development by merging computational thinking with cultural practices.

The thesis of this paper is that many Native American cultures share a cluster of connected ideas around themes of randomness, and that many African cultures share a cluster of connected ideas around themes of deterministic chaos. The idea that African cultures are connected to deterministic chaos and its computational relatives in fractals and com...

There is a large body of written materials, available online, that are easily accessed and which recount aspects of Benoît’s life, times, research, quotations, and opinions. But here we try to capture afresh the fact that he was one of us, a mathematician, and to give a glimpse and feeling, for the time that you read this, of the real and amazing m...

Fractals are patterns that repeat themselves at many scales. In the context of African art and design, that simple characterization takes on profound meanings that can move across disciplines and geographic boundaries. Fractal patterns can be found in African architecture, textiles, sculpture, music, and many other places. The means by which comput...

Ethnomathematics faces two challenges: first, it must investigate the mathematical ideas in cultural practices that are often assumed to be unrelated to mathematics. Second, even if we are successful in finding this previously unrecognized mathematics, applying this to children’s education may be difficult. In this essay, we will describe the use o...

Nanotechnology and Traditional Knowledge Systems abstract Several artifacts and practices important to traditional knowledge systems make use of phenomena described in nanotechnology research. These include nanotubes in ancient " Damascus " steel, surface nanostructure in Mayan blue pigment, the piezoelectric effect in Lakota quartz rattles, and th...

This article describes the use of fractal simulations of African design in a high school computing class. Fractal patterns---repetitions of shape at multiple scales---are a common feature in many aspects of African design. In African architecture we often see circular houses grouped in circular complexes, or rectangular houses in rectangular comple...

Purpose The paper aims to describe the inadequate nature of both “mono‐objectivist” approaches, which deny any role of social influence in science, and relativist social constructions, which fail to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. It outlines an alternative conceptual framework that allows for the possibility of social construction o...

The term African diaspora is relatively new, having become popular after World War II and first defined formally in a 1965 essay by George Shepperson. As noted by Edwards (2001) the specific phrase African diaspora contrasts with prior terms such as Pan-Africanism in ways that convey its orientation toward a more decentralized, heterogeneous, and a...

Every society exhibits one or more "design themes"-geometric abstractions that are manifested in myriad concrete forms. Four-fold symmetry is a deep design theme in many Native American cultures. This essay will describe how four-fold (and related bi-fold) symmetry is used as an organizing principle for religion, society, and technology in many Nat...

Technophilia has been routinely pathologized in the science and technology studies literature. It is variously framed as a type of dangerous psychological deviance, a form of spiritual deficit, and a source of social destruction. This essay seeks to reframe technophilia as a way of life no more pathological than homosexuality, atheism, or other tra...

Bourdieu and Passeron (1973) famously defined cultural capital as the accumulated cultural knowledge that confers power and status. Their original work explained many of the intangible advantages that allowed the upper class to obtain better status jobs, education, etc. Here we extend this concept to include "computational capital"—the concepts, sk...

Students who may typically view mathematics as a sterile and disjointed subject are learning new skills and concepts using a suite of virtual design tools to create artful expressions. Students being instructed in the use of these tools can artistically explore artifacts illustrating several Native American cultures as they learn mathematical conce...

Studies of the relations between culture and knowledge have in general been approached from three directions. First, in the ethnosciences approach the study of the knowledge of indigenous societies has been given terms such as ethnobotany and ethno-astronomy. Second, in the social constructionist approach, the cultural dimensions of contemporary sc...

Computational power plays an accelerating role in many powerful social locations. Simulation models, for example, sneak into our medical decisions, speak loudly in the global warming debate, invisibly determine the rates we pay for insurance, locate the position of a new bridge in our city, plot the course of our nation’s wars, and testify in the c...

A cultural field guide to software: artists, computer scientists, designers, cultural theorists, programmers, and others define a new field of study and practice. This collection of short expository, critical, and speculative texts offers a field guide to the cultural, political, social, and aesthetic impact of software. Computing and digital media...

A cultural field guide to software: artists, computer scientists, designers, cultural theorists, programmers, and others define a new field of study and practice. This collection of short expository, critical, and speculative texts offers a field guide to the cultural, political, social, and aesthetic impact of software. Computing and digital media...