The Cyber Innovation and Society Initiative is proud to bring important thought leaders to UVA to discuss topics in emerging technologies and their impact on society. The talks are open to the UVA community and the general public.
Former United States Navy Admiral Michael Rogers
Wednesday, September 25, 2019 at 1:00 PM
Dome Room at the UVA Rotunda
Seating for the event has reached capacity. Live stream viewing is available here!
Co-Sponsor: National Security Policy Center
Talk Title: Cyber Threats, Civil Liberties, and National Security
Abstract:
Admiral Mike Rogers will engage in a wide-ranging discussion of cybersecurity and privacy. ADM Rogers oversaw the NSA and led the standup of US Cyber Command in a period of turmoil over citizen privacy. He brings a perspective on how to preserve and protect the freedoms of US citizens who live in a technologically enabled world, but where criminals and adversaries seek to exploit the democratic values that underpin our society.
Biography:
Mike Rogers retired from the U.S. Navy in 2018 after nearly 37 years of naval service rising to the rank of four-star admiral. He culminated his career with a four-year tour as Commander, U.S. Cyber Command and Director, National Security Agency – creating the DoD’s newest combatant command and running the U.S. government’s largest intelligence organization. In those roles he worked with the leadership of the U.S. government, the DoD and the U.S. Intelligence community as well as their international counterparts in the conduct of cyber and intelligence activity across the globe. He also assisted in the development of national and international policy with respect to cyber, intelligence and technology – including extensive work with corporate leadership in the Finance, IT, Telecommunications and Technology sectors.
Admiral Rogers is currently supporting companies in the private sector, serving as a member of various Boards or acting as a Senior Advisor. He also speaks globally to various business and academic groups and is working internationally in the cyber and national security arenas. He is a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor with Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Managements’ Public Private Initiative and a member of the advisory board of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue and NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence. He is also a member of the United States Naval Institute Board of Directors and works with the National Defense University in the mentoring and professional development of DoD Flag and General officers.
Past Events
Tarleton Gillespie, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research
Monday, September 24, 2018, 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Dome Room at the UVA Rotunda
Seating is limited - register by clicking here
Talk Title: Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions that Shape Social Media
Abstract: While most social media users want their chosen platforms free from harassment and porn, they also want to see the content they choose to see. This means platforms face an irreconcilable contradiction: while platforms promise an open space for participation and community, every one of them imposes rules of some kind. In the early days of social media, content moderation was hidden away, even disavowed. But the illusion of the open platform has, in recent years, begun to crumble. Today, content moderation has never been more important, or more controversial. In his new book, Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, content moderation, and the hidden decisions that shape social media, Tarleton Gillespie explains how social media platforms police what we post online – and the societal impact of these decisions. Content moderation has never been ancillary or after-the-fact – it is crucial and definitional to what platforms do. Platforms can no longer duck the responsibility of being better custodians to the massive and contested public realm they have helped bring into being. But what are those companies’ responsibilities to the public?
Biography: Tarleton Gillespie is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, an affiliated associate professor in the Department of Communication and Department of Information Science at Cornell University, co-founder of the blog Culture Digitally, author of Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture (MIT, 2007) , co-editor of Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society (MIT, 2014), and author of Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions that Shape Social Media (Yale, 2018).
Bill Maurer, Director, UC Irvine, Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion
Monday, October 22, 2018, 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Dome Room at the UVA Rotunda
Co-sponsors: Department of Anthropology
Seating is limited - register by clicking here
Talk Title: That Touch of Money: The Cashless Past, Some Cashless Futures, and the Public Good
Abstract: Jumping off from political and humanitarian calls for the abolition of physical banknotes, this talk situates the most recent arguments for a cashless future in the context of the history of money, accounting, and payment technologies. It considers how new technological systems have reopened a political discussion over the nature and function of money and its materiality, while at the same time reflecting back on the affordances of technologies of accounting that would obviate the need for physical currency. The devil is in the material details, however: drawing on the archaeological record and considering the more recent history of technology, from the Automated Clearing House to cryptocurrencies, the talk will question the political ramifications of a cashless future that does not account for the relations of inequality underlying any money form.
Biography: Bill Maurer, Ph.D., is dean of the School of Social Sciences and professor of anthropology; criminology, law and society; and law at the University of California, Irvine. An anthropologist, he is one of the world’s leading experts on money’s artifacts and technological systems, from cowrie shells to credit cards. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including most recently, How Would You Like to Pay? How Technology is Changing the Future of Money, and recently edited (with Lana Swartz) Paid: Tales of Dongles, Checks, and Other Money Stuff. As director of the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion (www.imtfi.uci.edu), which was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Maurer coordinates research in over 40 countries on how new payment technologies impact poor people’s well-being. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and received his bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Vassar College and his master’s and doctoral degrees in anthropology from Stanford University.