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In an uncertain world where AI technology is disconnecting us more and more each day, we are dreaming of a world where technology connects us. The premise of this podcast of simple: let's talk to people and imagine the most hopeful and idealistic futures for technologies that connect and do good in the world.
AI-tocracy (00:01.275)
It always takes like a second for it to go up on LinkedIn and I always like to make sure that it's going on YouTube. But while we do that, this song's gonna play. There you go. You can just kind of groove while I go see if it's live on YouTube.
AI-tocracy (00:23.003)
If anyone has popped in, are hiring a producer. So if anyone wants to produce our show so that I don't have to go back and forth between this while hosting, then you're welcome to do that. All right. Just click on the video link there, making sure that we are live. Yep, we have a lag there, but we are good to go.
I am back on the correct page. All right. And I will fade out by abruptly turning that off.
Welcome to AI Talker-C Live, where we are trying to vision the future, the hopeful future, the positive future of technology, of AI and society and our world. And today I'm very excited to talk with friend and colleague, Dr. Oliver Haimson, about his new book, Trans Technology. And Oliver, how are you doing today?
Oliver (01:29.26)
Doing pretty well, how are you doing?
AI-tocracy (01:31.435)
I am, I'm doing well. I'm on the line with you. I saw you at a conference about two weeks ago and so it's good to be back on the line with you to chat and more of like a formal, yeah, exactly. And I'm gonna start by asking you the question that we ask everyone. What is something particularly inspirational going on in your life or in the world right now to you?
Oliver (01:40.118)
Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much for having me.
Oliver (01:54.124)
Yeah, I mean, it's sometimes hard to find inspiration in the world these days with everything going on, but I was thinking about this actually in the context of my trans technologies work that I talk about in the book. And one thing that I'm really inspired by pretty consistently is all of the young people who are creating these really exciting new technologies that often are helping to address some of the challenges that they're facing in the world, some of the challenges
their communities are facing. And so even in the interviews, I was talking to people who are 18 and up because that was kind of the IRB requirement.
A lot of them spoke about their experiences creating technology as teenagers or very young people, and some of them were 18 or 19 or 20. And they told me about all kinds of new technologies that I had never heard of myself that I would have never thought of. Things like I found out about game jams and stream teams and all of these really cool things. And so I feel like as technology continues to progress and
with all of the new emerging technologies. I can only imagine all of the cool things that this next generation of young people is gonna create.
AI-tocracy (03:13.595)
We'll get back to stream teams momentarily, but you have mentioned the book and obviously we're talking about trans technologies out now through MIT Press. Can you tell us about the book and also what you mean by trans technologies?
Oliver (03:30.742)
Yeah, of course. So this is the book. This is the physical copy. But I want to make sure everyone knows it's also available free to read online, open access on the MIT Press website. So basically, the book is.
talking about, I had these 100 interviews, well, over 100 interviews with creators of trans technology. And I'll tell you the definition of that in just a second. But basically, I wanted to understand what the landscape of trans technologies is and understand how that aligns with some of the needs and challenges that trans people and communities are facing. And so,
By trance technology, I have two definitions there. And these are actually definitions that I came up with from talking with these people in these interviews. So it wasn't just me coming up with a definition and imposing it on people. It was actually something that I asked them about. And so the first definition is a practical definition. So that is technology that addresses
the unique needs and challenges that trans people and communities face. And so that's pretty straightforward, probably what most people would expect. But then there's also this second definition that is a little more theoretical and it's drawing from trans studies and queer theory and things like that. And that's technology that is in some way trans itself. So it embraces change or transition in some way and has the potential to actually create
AI-tocracy (05:04.714)
is change or transition in some way and has the potential to actually create new trans worlds and also opens up new possibilities and in some ways can change what technology actually
Oliver (05:10.383)
new trans worlds and also opens up new possibilities and in some ways can change what technology actually means or what it can do. So those are two definitions. Some technologies fit into one or the other. Some actually fit into both. yeah, so basically throughout the book I...
just include a lot of examples and lot of quotes from all of these people that I spoke with about what they've been working on.
AI-tocracy (05:42.188)
Yeah, for... could you ground maybe the first half of that definition when you're thinking about trans technologies or technologies, I suppose, for trans people or being used by trans people? What? Yeah, can you just like ground that in some examples?
Oliver (05:56.127)
yeah, sure. So one example would be like app to help people track their hormone dosages. So there's one that I spoke with the creators. called ShopTracks. And they literally created the first version of it in about an hour. So sometimes these are really pretty simple technologies to build.
but things that can really help people or things that they identified that they needed in their life and then ended up creating themselves when they do have the skills to do that. Other examples of some of these more practical technologies are related to the current anti-trans political environment. And so there's been a lot of technologies that have been created.
to address that. So things like an app that connects people who need support with people who can provide support or a website that shows you where all of the protests are that you can go to in ways you can participate in activism and advocacy. So those are just a few examples, but there's lots more.
AI-tocracy (07:08.098)
Yeah, do you see this? I mean this in the least loaded way possible. Do you see this as a political book?
Oliver (07:16.556)
Yeah, I think it's kind of impossible to be apolitical in these times, you know? No matter what you're doing, really, I mean, there's a lot of political elements, I think, to all research and to all types of technology. In this book in particular,
You know, I was writing it in the past few years, so this was not with any knowledge of what 2025 would be like. And even at that time, though, a few years ago, this was when we were first starting to see a lot of the state-level anti-trans legislation or proposed bills and things like that. so...
there was still at that time a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety about all of the things that were happening politically, mostly in the US, but also in the UK and other parts of the world.
And so, you know, I think it's impossible really to talk about trans issues without it being political at this point in time, unfortunately, because it's just so highly politicized in terms of, it's, this seems to be a question of whether or not trans people are allowed to exist, you know, and it shouldn't be political, it shouldn't be a question, but unfortunately it is. So I've tried to lean into that.
political aspect of it and then the timing of course, you know, the book coming out in February 2025, I could never have anticipated what things would be like now, but it has turned out to be a really important time I think for a book like this.
AI-tocracy (09:01.185)
Yeah, for trans technologies it sounds like they've also evolved over time. Having read the book it sounds like they've evolved over time based off of the needs of people, especially trans people who have needed them, either as an act of resilience or even just like self-care or community care. Could you talk about that evolution a bit?
Oliver (09:21.812)
Yeah, for sure. So some of the technologies I talk about in the book, I think the earlier ones are from the 1970s even when Sandy Stone was doing a lot of kind of performance art, digital performance art. She was one of the founders of the academic field of trans studies. And so at that time, you know, the technologies that were available were very different.
but she was doing a lot of video-based performance art stuff. And then in the 90s and early 2000s, a lot of what we were seeing were resource websites, mostly created by trans women to just provide information that people really desperately needed at the time, but wasn't very readily available. And so they were, in some sense, replacing a lot of print forms of media, things like
physical magazines and things like that that would be pretty hard for people to get sometimes depending on where they would live. So we saw a lot of resource sites, we started to see online communities, things like that on platforms like AOL for instance. And then more recently,
As technology evolves, trans technologies also evolve. So now we have a lot of things that are using AR and VR, so augmented reality and virtual reality, and a lot more apps than just websites, and lots of pretty innovative and exciting new technologies.
AI-tocracy (10:55.993)
and lots of pretty innovative and exciting new technologies. Yeah, for those changes, I guess how has that been helpful or how has that changed how trans communities or trans folks interact with technology or with one another?
Oliver (11:18.7)
Yeah, I think it's made it a lot easier for people to interact with the community.
It used to be that it really depended on where you live. And if you live in a pretty rural environment, there probably wouldn't be an in-person support group or anything like that or community for you to tap into. And gender transition, like a lot of life transitions and a lot of different health conditions, can be really hard if you're isolated and if you don't have that community support. And so...
these online communities and online resources have been incredibly helpful, I think, for people who don't just have that.
in-person physical access to community to be able to find the information that they need and the support that they need and things like that. So that has, I think, been huge. Of course, there's a lot of challenges as well because with any online community or online space sometimes you need to restrict access to make sure that harmful people aren't getting in and then you get into questions of how do you decide who to let in and that can be
really difficult sometimes for people who, you know, don't have access to trans community. How can they, you know, prove that they do actually belong in these communities? So there are a lot of challenges too.
AI-tocracy (12:47.447)
Yeah, do you, when you're thinking about trans technologies, are you thinking about it as all positive technologies? Or is it more, you trying to be descriptive or are there also like negative, because there is a lot of trans hate online and are the technologies that allow for that or the communication of that hate, are they part of your understanding of trans technologies?
Oliver (13:11.261)
Yeah, I mean, I would consider those to be anti-trans technologies, I think. So if you think about things like even airport scanners at TSA, know, those are actually a little bit better nowadays. They no longer have the thing where the person presses a blue or a pink button for the scan. So that's an improvement. But still, there are a lot of instances when trans people are, because of that technology, trans people are detained.
AI-tocracy (13:32.089)
You
Oliver (13:41.258)
and searched in pretty invasive ways. So that's something I would consider an anti-trans technology. Another example, there's one technology I talk about in my book. It's a map that Erin Reed, who's a prominent trans activist and journalist, she had created this map to help people find access to providers who could do trans healthcare on an informed consent model. So basically saying that people have a bit more agency over there.
the ones making the decision about their healthcare. And that map, she had created it using Google My Maps. And I don't know if this feature is still available on there, but at the time, anyone could just kind of press a button and copy that My Maps.
And so actually some conservative anti-trans people did exactly that and basically turned this map that was supposed to be a pro-trans technology into a way to target a lot of these providers and actually cause harm to those providers. So yeah, so there's a lot of ways that things can go wrong, mostly related to security and privacy and things like that.
yeah, I have another example if you want another one.
AI-tocracy (15:02.444)
Yeah, it is interesting. It's almost like a co-opting of the trans technologies for anti-trans technologies.
Oliver (15:05.866)
Yeah.
Yeah, and I think that I haven't seen a lot of instances of that, but I think that that's definitely something to be aware of. And then in terms of the...
technologies that are actually created for the community and are intended to be good. Most of them I haven't seen negative implications and sometimes that's just because they don't ever get very big. And so they're kind of just being used by small groups of people and we're not seeing a lot of the potential negative implications.
But recently I came across one of the companies that had created a bunch of different trans apps and they decided to move in a new direction. And the new direction was LGBTQ plus vaping. And...
Like, initially I was just like, this is the most hilarious thing ever. Like why? It's basically just vaping, but they're branding it with, you know, rainbows and trans flags and things like that. But then I started to realize like vaping is nicotine. Nicotine is actually not good for people. And there's actually been medical studies showing that nicotine is especially bad for trans women who are on estrogen.
AI-tocracy (16:10.136)
Sure.
AI-tocracy (16:26.742)
Hmm.
Oliver (16:26.923)
And so it can actually interfere with the estrogen being able to work as intended and there are higher risks and all of these things. not only is it just ridiculous and not something that anyone needs, it also can be potentially harmful medically to the population that it's intended for. And so this is an example where it is actually, you know, a trans woman who created this.
but it can be quite harmful.
AI-tocracy (17:00.556)
Yeah, when we're thinking about trans technologies, who are the people that are developing these technologies? And are there bigger players like you've already mentioned Google? Are there other bigger players that are designing trans technologies?
Oliver (17:15.243)
Yeah, there are, in the sample of people that I spoke with, was about 80 % of them were trans or non-binary themselves.
So and the rest were cisgender allies. Most of them were not big companies, although sometimes they would use technologies from bigger companies. So I gave the example of Google My Maps. Other people would piece together different, more mainstream platforms to create their new trans technology that was sort of an assemblage of those. So one example is an online community that's on Discord, but they
also use Notion quite a bit to do some of their organizing and they use like an email list and Google Docs and all of these different things and this creator specifically said to me that
they considered this a trans technology in the way that they were bringing all of these mainstream technologies together. So even though you would never think like Notion is on its own a trans technology, it depends how people are using it. And then there are a few trans technologies that are actually pretty large.
companies. There aren't very many, but there are a few that are actually venture capital funded. And the biggest one would be called Folks Health, and it's a telehealth company and actually doing really good work. It is a way for people to get trans health care through this online service.
AI-tocracy (18:40.248)
And the biggest one.
Oliver (18:58.034)
when they might not have access to that nearby where they live. And so it's really been helping with some of these barriers, but it is a huge, highly funded company. They've raised almost $60 million in VC funding. And so it's definitely, you know, I think a lot of people in the community really appreciate it, but then at the same time, it doesn't really align with the values that a lot of trans people hold around.
around capitalism basically.
AI-tocracy (19:31.062)
Yeah, well what do you make of that? Of money going into, it sounds like a successful startup turned big company around, it sounds like pro trans health or at least trans information, maybe medical information, access and education, but now having turned the point to being a conglomerate.
Oliver (19:52.915)
Yeah, I mean, I think that in that case, it seems fine to me that there's two of them. Actually, there's another one called Plume, which is doing very similar things and has also raised multiple millions of dollars. And I think those are great because they are serving a need. Like the community really does need access to health care and no one can really argue with that. What I think is more problematic is when these companies are raising funding.
and are not actually fulfilling a need for the community. And so that would go back to this company that created the LGBTQ vaping. So before they did that, they had, it wasn't as much money, but it was still almost 600,000 that they had raised. And they were creating this series of apps that...
really seemed to be aligned with only what they thought was important, not really what the community needed the most. And that's a case where if you have all of this money, it could actually do much more good if it was just distributed directly to communities and to individual people, you know? So that's kind of where I find it a bit more problematic. And that's kind of the argument.
main arguments of the book is that a lot of times these technologies can be really individualistic and
people are not really doing any kind of user research and saying, okay, what does the community actually need? And so they're saying, what do I need? And those creators do tend to be more privileged parts of the trans community. So it tends to be people who are white, people who are highly educated and have more money and resources basically. And so they're not thinking about things like day-to-day safety, which is one of the things I think is
Oliver (21:59.452)
one of the biggest needs right now. Like we could have many more trans technologies for safety, but that's not actually where people are focusing. And that's also probably not a place where there's a lot of money to be made. So I think that's kind of one of the issues we get into when things are highly monetized and based on this capitalist system.
AI-tocracy (22:05.173)
Yeah.
AI-tocracy (22:23.381)
Yeah, that's probably a bad time to say that this episode is sponsored by the LGBTQ vape companies of the world. I am curious for you, you've researched a lot of different topics, your lab research is a lot of different topics and yet right now, your research and this book is about trans technologies and trans needs and I'm wondering for you what led you to this point to focus this entire book on this important issue.
Oliver (22:53.755)
Yeah, I initially when I started this particular research project, I didn't really think that it would be a book. It was I had a student named Kai Nam. He's now a PhD student at UCLA, but at the time he was coming to Michigan for a summer program for master's students to do research with faculty. And so I had this idea for this project of interviewing creators of trans technologies and worked with Kai to
to kick off the project. And once we started getting these interview transcripts and analyzing them,
I started to realize just how much was there and that it wasn't really the kind of thing that made sense to just write a series of conference papers or journal articles. seemed like there was just a lot going on. And there were also some threads I was seeing that I wanted to be able to talk about over the course of a longer piece of text. And...
Also, I wanted to be able to speak to a broader audience. So I think that a lot of times with the kind of papers that we write for conferences or journals,
These are things that other academics and probably only other academics in our field are going to read. And so I think it limits the audience quite a bit. But a book, I think, is a much more accessible format for really anybody who might be interested in the topic and especially members of the trans community themselves to be able to read that. And so.
Oliver (24:30.757)
I just, thought this was a really interesting area that a lot of people should have access to. And yeah, so that was a big motivation for the book.
AI-tocracy (24:42.41)
Yeah, wanted to go back to the previous topic when we were thinking about AI, or not even AI safety, but safety for trans technologies. Sorry, it's just so ingrained in my brain. We're talking about AI now all the time. But could you talk more about
Oliver (24:52.485)
Yeah.
AI-tocracy (25:00.208)
safety concerns because that also sounds like a major motivation for you to put this book together.
Oliver (25:06.235)
Yeah, so I think there's two aspects of it. One is physical safety in physical spaces, which I think I saw statistic recently. think trans people are about four times more likely to be physically assaulted in public places than the general population. So it's a pretty important need, I think, when we're talking about people.
actually getting physically assaulted. And that's something that I think is very hard for technology to address. Like there's a lot of what I talk about in the book, like I view these as ways to help address challenges. I don't view these as technological solutions because obviously an app is not going to.
you know, keep someone entirely safe. But I think there are ways that technologies can help. And so one thing I've seen in three different US cities, there are groups that are making these self-defense kits, basically, especially for trans women of color, because those are, that's the group that is most at risk. And so these are, I consider these trans technologies, they're basically kits of
know, little tools that will help to keep people safe if they're in an unsafe situation. And they usually put a lot of care into it too and make it, you know, a type of technology that is kind of fun as well. So like using pastel colors or things like that. But like I said, this is only in three cities. It's in LA, Oakland, and Chicago.
And the reason it has to be location specific is because there are different laws in each state and in each location about what you actually can carry around legally. So it wouldn't make sense for one in California to be a nationwide program. And so that's the kind of thing, like we really need that in all cities basically to help this population avoid physical violence. And then there is, of course, online violence as well and online safety.
AI-tocracy (27:05.408)
cities.
Oliver (27:16.257)
is a pretty huge concern as well because there's just a lot of harassment, especially in this political climate. It just seems to keep growing. And so we also need technologies that will help keep trans people safe online. And some of those are as simple as content moderation systems. But
As we know, lot of the mainstream social media platforms have recently said that they actually don't really care about keeping people safe related to gender. so in that sense, we need to make our own tools for that. And there were some of the people I interviewed for the book were actually creating.
content moderation tools. And actually, I have a student, Francesca Lamero, who is creating a classifier, basically, that can detect anti-trans content.
online, which right now it's just a system that says yes or no, this is anti-trans, but you can imagine now a system like that could be used for people to filter out some of the content that is really harmful.
AI-tocracy (28:34.708)
Yeah, we don't have to go too far down the LLM, large language model rabbit hole. But I am wondering, we've talked a lot about say online communities and online social media platforms so far. When we're thinking about AI, which is in the title of the podcast, so I feel like I should bring it up. When we're thinking about AI, mentioned classifiers, online. How do you see that interaction and maybe what are some examples of trans technologies or anti-trans technologies that might be LLM based?
Oliver (29:04.826)
Yeah, so I did the research for the book right before all of the LLM stuff blew up. And I actually wrote about this a little bit because it was interesting how little people were actually talking about AI or even algorithms. And so my sense is that that's not.
a huge place for trans technologies. But I have seen some things come up in recent years related to AI and LLMs.
I haven't seen anything that's been particularly useful and helpful. I think partly because it's another issue of people are just like, OK, this is something that might be fun to build, but doesn't necessarily address needs. So if you do start by thinking about what are the needs and like,
something that does detect between something that is a harmful comment online versus something that's not. That kind of thing is very useful. The types of things I've seen, the ones that I think are doing the best work probably is some of these kind of artistic and just very weird uses of generative AI. So one is there's a
a site called Queering the Map, which is basically a map interface where people can annotate it with places where queer things happen to them. They can say, OK, this is where I met my partner or something like that, or tell little stories. And so it's a really cool site. But the creator of that site created a generative AI system that basically takes
Oliver (31:01.34)
that data, the notes and things like that that people have written and also some kind of visual data. might be from Google Maps. I'm not sure. And creates kind of speculative versions of that, which I was looking at it and I was like, this is actually like really interesting and cool. But at the same time, I have to think about, OK, I don't think the people who contributed this data intended for it to be used that way.
AI-tocracy (31:13.039)
kind of speculative versions of that, which I was looking at it and I like this is actually really interesting and cool, but at the same time I have to think about, I don't think that people who contributed this data intended for it to be used that way. I think that they saw this as,
Oliver (31:31.294)
think that they saw this as a non-AI system. It's basically just a math system that they wanted to contribute to. But they didn't say, yes, this is fine for you to use this to create this generative AI tool. So I don't know. I have a lot of mixed feelings there.
AI-tocracy (31:49.43)
have a lot of understanding there. Sounds like an evolving space, like a lot of the spaces right now, the levels of uncertainty. So I am, I know this book was not explicitly written for developers or say for Google engineers and I know that we have thousands of Google engineers that listen to this podcast every week. But for those people, are there specific, like say someone is on board, an engineer, right, is on board with
Oliver (31:54.972)
Yeah, definitely.
AI-tocracy (32:18.825)
trans technologies, they're like, yeah, we should build that, we should support the trans community through technologies that we're developing. Do you have any starting points for them or things they should be considering?
Oliver (32:30.684)
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it goes back to involving communities in design. And so I've noticed a whole new line of research around, and I can't remember what it's called at the moment, but where they're basically involving community members and creating AI systems and thinking about the values behind how these systems are going to be created. And...
Whenever I read a paper like this, I'm kind of thinking, well, that's a good start, but I think they still have the assumption that they should be creating AI.
And I think sometimes the community might say, that's not actually what we need. Just like a lot of times with participatory design, you might go in as a technology researcher with the assumption that technology is something the community wants, and sometimes they'll hear that they don't. And I think it's really important to involve communities, but also to make room for
communities to say, actually, we don't want this. And that's a little bit what I worry about is that I don't know if there's room for that. know, if someone from Google is coming in and saying, hey, you what can we do to build AI for the trans community? They need to be open and receptive to the answer of maybe not doing that at all. And that kind of relates to
AI-tocracy (33:48.767)
they need to be open and receptive to the answer of maybe not doing that.
Oliver (33:59.664)
This paper that my group is publishing at FACT this year, it's a conference on fairness and accountability in computing. basically, in some of our qualitative work recently, we had been hearing a lot from trans participants, this resistance and hesitancy towards AI. And this was in a study we did.
in the last few years that was actually not even about AI at all. It was about augmented reality. And in talking about augmented reality, people started just kind of naturally talking about AI and some of their concerns with it. And so this was a qualitative study with 44 people. And so I was like, this seems to be a thing, but I want to...
examine if this is actually something that is more widespread in terms of the kind of more negative attitudes towards AI in trans communities.
So then we did this larger survey where we surveyed general population, but then also we were looking specifically at trans people, non-binary people, racial minorities, and people with disabilities, and just asking them about their attitudes towards AI. And in that work, there were really strong results showing that trans people, and especially non-binary people actually, are
pretty resistant towards AI. They have statistically significantly lower attitudes towards AI than the general population. So that makes me think.
Oliver (35:44.88)
in this world where it's almost becoming compulsory to use AI, even if you don't choose to use it yourself, like you're applying for a job or you're using healthcare or whatever it is that you're doing in your day-to-day life, a lot of times you're compelled to use AI and you might not even know that you're using it. And so if we know that certain marginalized populations are much more hesitant or resistant or feeling negatively about AI, it feels
AI-tocracy (35:49.717)
AI, know, even if you don't choose to use it yourself, like you're applying for a job or you're using healthcare or whatever it is that you're doing in your day to day life, a lot of times you're compelled to.
Oliver (36:15.079)
it feels wrong to have it be so kind of forced and not give people the chance to opt out in a lot of cases.
AI-tocracy (36:27.688)
Yeah, yeah, I am a slightly different angle on this. I could imagine someone listening and hearing about this book and saying, well, this is controversial. This seems like something that's really problematic for various reasons. I'm wondering so far, because you've been on a whole book tour and talked to a lot of different audiences, what has the reaction been not just within
kind of our sphere, like our HCI sphere that I imagine is really, really supportive of this, and then maybe beyond that, as you've been getting public press.
Oliver (37:03.579)
Yeah, interestingly, in person, everything has been great. And so a lot of that has been me coming to academic departments and speaking with researchers in HCI and related fields. I've also been to a lot of bookstores and things like that, talking to more general audiences.
And even, think, I didn't go to a lot of red states, but I did go to Indiana. And that was, you one of the best events because there's people who care about this everywhere. And so in person, I didn't receive any negative pushback. Online is definitely a different story. I...
AI-tocracy (37:45.364)
Sure.
Oliver (37:48.613)
have had negative reactions from pretty prominent conservative figures like Charlie Kirk directly tweeted about me. And I kind of thought that this sort of thing would really get to me and bother me, but it turns out it actually doesn't. It's pretty easy to ignore. And then also, I wrote an article for Time Magazine recently about trans travel and how it's,
AI-tocracy (38:08.852)
you
Oliver (38:18.536)
pretty precarious right now with some of the issues in terms of passports and things like that. And I looked a little bit, because Time had obviously posted it on Facebook and X, and I looked a little bit at the comments and then I was like, I don't think I should look at these. it's mostly audiences like that that have been more hostile, but...
AI-tocracy (38:34.588)
You're right.
Oliver (38:43.78)
That's kind of to be expected. The only sad thing is I feel like, you know, that Charlie Kirk tweet got way more attention than anything that was positive about the book.
AI-tocracy (38:54.612)
probably sold some copies though. It's all publicity is good publicity. It's something for these episodes where I do imagine getting like, know, DMs or whatever, which has happened before being like, no, this is great. Like you clicked on it, you listened to a clip. Like, this is awesome. Because it means that more people are aware of the work in the first place, even if they're staunchly, I guess, opposed to it. I do want to spend a little bit of time before we move towards
Oliver (39:04.432)
Yeah.
Oliver (39:17.638)
Yeah.
AI-tocracy (39:23.336)
wrapping up on the maybe more academic angle, because I know that academics are waiting for the theory who are listening to this. When you're thinking about trans technologies and that second definition that you brought up at the beginning of the episode, more on like that academic theory space, what does that mean? What does that look like?
Oliver (39:43.333)
Yeah, so I think that there are ways that we can think about technology.
in more complex ways than we normally do. And so that's why I like to think about ways that what technology is can actually change. And that is a way that technology can be trans, even if it's not specifically about gender at all, if it's about change or transition or crossing boundaries or things like this. And so I think maybe the easiest way to do this is through
an example. So one of the examples that I really like to talk about is these are actually HCI researchers that created a facial prosthetic that people can use with.
Apple Face ID. So thinking about unlocking your iPhone, and this is a way that you can actually have two different identities or multiple identities if you can create a facial prosthetic that actually makes you look like you have a different face. And so...
AI-tocracy (40:51.123)
So like literally creating basically a mask that Apple would then recognize as an entirely different person. Wow.
Oliver (40:57.218)
Exactly, yeah. And so it looked like usually it was like covering the nose and parts of the cheeks and things like this. And this was done in a very participatory fashion with a bunch of workshop participants. This was the lead researcher is Sol Beza Arguello in Barcelona. so this team of researchers worked with participants to create these and they were a
to successfully make it so that you could have multiple identities on Apple Face ID, which can be really important for people who are changing gender. You know, if they're in some spaces are presenting in one way and in other spaces are presenting another way, it could be a really useful thing. And so that was really cool. It came out of thinking about trans identities, but then what was a little more unexpected was that afterwards
the participants, they were able to keep these facial prosthetics after the study. And they actually ended up finding different purposes for them. So they used them to resist surveillance, for instance, cameras and public streets and even workplace surveillance and things like this. So if you don't want your employer or your city to be able to track you, you probably actually do need a facial prosthetic because
even if you just wear a mask, those cameras can now detect, we have systems that can detect just from the top half of your face. And so I just thought this was really fascinating from a theoretical perspective and thinking about what trans technology means, because this is something that did come about by thinking about trans identities, but then it went way further to be used in all of these different contexts. And that's really
what I mean when I say that it can open up new possibilities for what technology can do.
AI-tocracy (43:01.031)
with when we're thinking not to go too far into the weeds, but when we're thinking about trans technologies and as a theory compared to like queer technologies, where does queerness fit in is maybe a better question with this whole book and with what you're talking about.
Oliver (43:11.216)
Yeah.
Sure.
Yeah, so it's kind of interesting because sometimes I like to say we sort of skipped over queer technologies. Like there's been a little bit of theorization about that before my book came out, but really not a lot. Like no one had actually defined what queer technology meant as far as I had found. And there have been some researchers now doing work in that space, like Katie Wellington from Boulder in her dissertation work.
also, I think Jordan Taylor at Carnegie Mellon is doing some work in that space. And lots of other people are doing exciting things as well. But basically, the way I think about it is queering is more about disruption. So you're trying to get rid of things like binaries and boundaries, and you're really just not thinking of things as categorical in that way. Whereas transness is more about this
aspect of change or transition. So if you think of a boundary or a binary, queerness will disrupt it, transness will cross over it. And so I know that might be a little too academician in the weeds, that's the way I've... yeah.
AI-tocracy (44:31.953)
No, I asked I asked I asked about the differences this is interesting to me at least
Oliver (44:35.743)
Yeah, so that's the way I've been thinking about it. So a lot of times trans technologies do involve a lot of those queer aspects as well in terms of, like if you think about things like flexibility and you know I had some work about Tumblr was some of my early work about trans technology and Tumblr is a space that a lot of people have considered it very queer in a lot of ways because of the way you can be really flexible with self-presentation and things like that.
but then I was saying, well, also it's a trans technology because it's a way for people to actually express new identities that are completely different from their previous identities in this space. yeah, a lot of things can be both, but I think there's definitely a distinction.
AI-tocracy (45:29.171)
Yeah, when, so we've talked a lot about the history of trans technologies and a bit about the present. In terms of visioning hope for the future of technologies in general, for trans technologies, where do you hope that these technologies go in the future? Do you have like an ideal vision of the world of trans technologies in the future?
Oliver (45:49.902)
Yeah, so...
two ways I want to go with that. So one is kind of related to what I was talking about right at the beginning with all of these young people who have really cool ideas. And in that sense, I don't feel like I know where it's going to go. I just want to keep watching those people and people who are at this point don't even know how to code. in a few years, they will or they will be creating really cool art or
things like that, or putting together tools in ways that no one else would have imagined. And so really, I see the future there in terms of seeing what exciting things these really creative young people are going to do. And then on the other side of things, what I really hope for
is more of a connection between the needs of the community and the technologies that are created. So in the book I talk about a few areas where there really aren't any trans technologies or there aren't enough. So we mentioned safety earlier in this conversation. Another area is in helping people with documents. So things like passports and driver's licenses. are areas where it's
It's actually pretty hard to figure out.
Oliver (47:15.733)
how to take the steps to actually make those changes in name and gender marker and things like that. So what I would love to see is rather than it just being kind of this free for all space where whoever has the resources and whoever has the tech skills, they just create what they want to create for themselves. I would much rather have it be more of a connection to community and what the actual needs of the community are.
AI-tocracy (47:44.124)
needs of the community are. that, think, will get us to
Oliver (47:45.591)
And that, I think, will get us to a place where people have their needs met more. I mean, it's not just going to happen through technology. It also has to happen through social change. But I hope that when people have their needs met more, then we have much more room for people to create some of these fun technologies, so things like games and...
AI-tocracy (47:57.523)
Yeah.
Oliver (48:11.461)
even online communities on digital art and just things like that.
AI-tocracy (48:19.002)
And in a segment that I always say it's my Ezra Klein segment because I stole it directly from his podcast because I think it's good if there is a podcast, maybe other piece of media, maybe book. You can plug your own book as well, but maybe choose an additional in addition to your book. What is a piece of media that people should go out and pick up or consume?
Oliver (48:41.443)
Yeah, so I actually have physical props for this as well. So I really like this book by Avery Dame Griff, The Two Revolutions, History of the Transgender Internet. So it is kind of talking about a lot of the same themes that I talk about, but from a historical perspective. So really going into what was happening on these, you know, BBS platforms like long ago. And yeah, really, really good.
book. The other one I want to mention just like this is what I read last year. So this is huge. It's like 1200 pages. It's called the Power Broker by Robert Caro. And it's a history of Robert Moses, who had created a lot of the physical infrastructure in New York City and Long Island. And
AI-tocracy (49:20.4)
What's the book for folks who are listening in audio?
Oliver (49:37.125)
It's not about technology, but it's really useful in terms of understanding how power works in our society. Because if we think about the way that these AI companies are run and all of them grasping for AGI and all of this and...
power is really important to understand in that context. And this book is all about a person who was never elected to any sort of public office, but had a massive amount of power in terms of how so many things happened in New York in particular, and a lot of kind of very sinister.
things that he did. So, you know, I kind of always grapple with this question of is it possible to have a ton of power and also be good? And I hope that it is, but that's something that I worry about with the current tech sphere and also the current political sphere. So it's nice to have a historical background thinking about that stuff.
AI-tocracy (50:45.67)
Yeah, as you're saying, yeah, someone who is not elected but has a lot of power there. There's at least one person that comes to mind who I won't name out loud, you know, someone that comes to mind. For folks who would like to get in contact with you and who would like to buy the book or follow you online or anything else.
Oliver (50:50.116)
Yes. Yes. Exactly.
Oliver (51:07.212)
Yeah, so the book is available at some bookstores or if you want to support it in book store, bookshop.org is a really good website to do that. But it's also, of course, available free open access on MIT Press's website. And then for me, I have kind of just decided to stick with three social media platforms because there's too many of them. So I'm basically putting most of my energy into LinkedIn, Blue Sky, and
Instagram and Instagram I actually have an account for the book so it's at Trans Technologies so that's why I post a lot of visual it's sort of like an archive of a lot of the trans technologies that I talk about in the book and that I've talked about today but I just post you know visual artifacts so that's been really a fun account to maintain.
AI-tocracy (52:02.866)
Amazing, well, and you said it's free, right? The book is free? How do people find the free book?
Oliver (52:07.884)
Yes. it's on the MIT Press website. There's a link for open access there.
AI-tocracy (52:17.782)
Well, Oliver, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.
Oliver (52:22.52)
Yeah, thank you so much. This has been a really fun conversation. I appreciate it.