Author: Alex Taylor

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About Alex Taylor
Alex Taylor is a sociologist working in the Centre for Human Computer Interaction Design. Showing a broad fasciation for the entanglements between social life and machines, his research ranges from empirical studies of technology in everyday life to speculative design interventions—both large and small scale. Across these realms, he draws on a feminist technoscience to ask questions about the co-constitutive roles human-machine composites play in forms of knowing and being, and how they might open up possibilities for fundamental transformations in society. Most recently, he’s begun to wonder about the abilities of humans and non-humans, together, and to speculate on hybrid compositions that enlarge capacity and offer the chance of something different-than, something more-than.

Posts by Alex Taylor

IX Magazine: Feminisms in Design

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Very excit­ed to see the *Fem­i­nisms in Design* issue of @interactionsMag hit­ting the shelves. Thought­ful con­ver­sa­tions from schol­ars like Mayar El Bakry, Ani­ta Say Chan, Shaowen Bardzell, Alex Ahmed, Maryam Mustafa, @gleemie, @nehakumar and @ChSaiShruthi.https://t.co/Su0W5ips6H pic.twitter.com/Jlb1x4280P — Alex Tay­lor (@alxndrt) Novem­ber 5, 2020 […]

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Talk: Critical Perspectives on AI Ethics

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Join us next week for an excit­ing 2‑day con­fer­ence on Crit­i­cal Per­spec­tive on AI Ethics! 20+ pan­elists from mul­ti­ple fields, a poster ses­sion, and a stel­lar speak­er line-up: @ShannonVallor @BakitaKK @alxndrt @benzevgreen @UoE_EFI Reg­is­ter here: https://t.co/eJV7nkCqlC — AIES Edin­burgh (@aies_edinburgh) Octo­ber 15, 2020 Brush­ing up on one of my favourite top­ics, Clever Hans the horse — […]

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IX Magazine: Design in the Pandemic

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*Design in the Pan­dem­ic* hot off the press from @interactionsMag. Hard work from so many to get #hci, #design, + #covid relat­ed con­tent out in a (sort of) time­ly fash­ion. Words from @danielarosner @barbro66 @DuncanBrumby @tripsandflips_ @Callygraphy … https://t.co/hUHeeN8v0N pic.twitter.com/Dl3ClmIG8R — Alex Tay­lor (@alxndrt) July 30, 2020 […]

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Conference papers

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I’ve been slow to share papers here, so post­ing about two recent­ly pub­lished papers. With both pub­li­ca­tions it was a absolute joy and priv­i­lege to work with my co-authors. Abstract Cur­rent approach­es to AI and Assis­tive Tech­nol­o­gy (AT) often fore­ground task com­ple­tion over oth­er encoun­ters such as expres­sions of care. Our paper chal­lenges and complements […]

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Sending HTML formatted emails using BuddyPress and BBPress

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I’ve spent quite a long time try­ing to fig­ure out how to send html for­mat­ted emails on a com­mu­ni­ty Word­Press site, using Bud­dy­press and bbpress. It’s tak­en a bit of dig­ging and a com­bi­na­tion of sources so I thought I’d share my final solu­tion. The prob­lem I run a Word­Press web­site for my local neighbourhood […]

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PhD Scholarships at City

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We’d love to haveappli­ca­tions from prospec­tive stu­dents want­i­ng to join the Cen­tre for Human-Com­put­er Inter­ac­tion Design (HCID). The dead­line is 20th May 2020. For details and appli­ca­tion process, see here. Top­i­cal­ly, I’m very open to sug­ges­tions. I’d love to see pro­pos­als tak­ing crit­i­cal and per­haps mate­ri­al­ist ori­en­ta­tions to techno­science. Fem­i­nist, inter­sec­tion­al think­ing would also be […]

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Halfway to the Future

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Alex Tay­lor giv­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing respon­sive talk after Lucy Such­man #httf2019 pic.twitter.com/UU0cgeSL0A — Kather­ine Isbis­ter (@kcisbister) Novem­ber 19, 2019 Today’s final keynote is a remote but co-present con­ver­sa­tion between @alxndrt and Lucy Such­man on the entan­gle­ment of human-machine agen­cies #httf2019 pic.twitter.com/VXCRF8jLyF — Luig­i­na Ciolfi (@luiciolfi) Novem­ber 19, 2019 Speak­ing at the Mixed Real­i­ty Lab’s Halfway to the […]

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Data Bodies, Social Objects: S1 Art Space Sheffield

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So grate­ful to Ilona Sagar for invit­ing me to join her at Park Hill’s S1 Art­space, in Sheffield. Lau­ra Vaugh­an and I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to respond to her thought pro­vok­ing film Deep Struc­ture, in a con­ver­sa­tion title “Data Bod­ies, Social Objects”. Fan­tas­tic talk from our ‘Data Bod­ies, Social Objects’ pan­el on Wednes­day AND a […]

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Bauhaus Futures Book Chapter

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  This chap­ter exam­ines the process­es of scal­ing made vis­i­ble with­in the words and work of the Weimer Bauhaus and, par­tic­u­lar­ly, Anni Albers’ care­ful accounts of weav­ing. We explore whether thread­ing a fem­i­nist pre­car­i­ty into her writ­ing helps illu­mi­nate new ways of exam­in­ing ten­sions between what we scale up and what we scale down. Read­ing with […]

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Seminar talk at Edinburgh Design Informatics

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Real­ly delight­ed to have pre­sent­ed at Design infor­mat­ics this week. “The grid/table par­ti­tions, breaks down bod­ies & labour. The grid/tables remake the body as an inte­gral part to new infra­struc­ture. The grid/table acts as a reg­u­la­to­ry or dis­ci­pli­nary struc­ture, dic­tat­ing the pos­si­ble” @alxndrt shakes the core of @DataCapitalEd @DesignInf pic.twitter.com/73tqu2ovLf — chris­speed (@chrisspeed) Sep­tem­ber 26, 2019 […]

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