kay slater
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kslater.bsky.social
kay slater
@kslater.bsky.social
580 followers 470 following 330 posts
Chicago-based information worker (critical technology + libraries, community archives), DJ. views are indeed my own

blog: https://online-roleplay.ghost.io
scholarship: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-2026-8669
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kslater.bsky.social
kay slater @kslater.bsky.social · Aug 27
In “Against AI: Critical Refusal in the Library,” I examine LIS as in need of a values-realignment, asking readers to refuse the technosolutionism we are so often offered in place of human-centered possibilities, like taking racism, climate change, and labor rights seriously

doi.org/10.1353/lib....
Project MUSE - Against AI: Critical Refusal in the Library
doi.org
kslater.bsky.social
it is absolutely amazing to see someone—especially THIS someone—create a 4-hour documentary on a topic that you *nearly* devoted years to studying in grad school. burden relieved

the joy in watching it unfold… thank you kevin youtu.be/NyIgV84fudM?...
Disney's Living Characters: A Broken Promise
YouTube video by Defunctland
youtu.be
November 24, 2025 at 7:54 PM
kslater.bsky.social
i love my city
djbyrnes1.bsky.social Dave Byrnes @djbyrnes1.bsky.social · 2d
Yesterday my partner and I counted all the ads along Chicago's Brown Line for "Friend," a company selling an AI chatbot pendant, and tallied how many of those ads were defaced.

Still working on a longer piece on this, but here's the quick and dirty: we counted 104 "Friend" ads total, 42 defaced.
Sign for a "Friend" ad defaced with graffiti reading "AI doesn't care if you live or die." Sign for a "Friend" ad defaced with graffiti reading "talk to humans" Sign for a "Friend" ad defaced with graffiti reading "Fuck this!" Sign for a "Friend" ad defaced with graffiti reading "you don't have to accept this future."
November 24, 2025 at 1:56 AM
kslater.bsky.social
helpful context for Mamdani: he’s a Libra
November 22, 2025 at 12:45 AM
Reposted by kay slater
mikerugnetta.com
Pals! A new @neverpo.st, thank god. Friend of the Show Meghal spent a year fixing an attention span broken by scrolling; hear what she learned in the process.

Then! Meghal speaks w/ the organizers of a New Luddism conference about reclaiming agency from encroaching technology.

Also: MACHINES!
🆕 Never Post! The Year I Learned to Pay Attention
Choose life
www.neverpo.st
November 21, 2025 at 7:28 PM
kslater.bsky.social
if i have to hear “libraries had to adapt to Google, so we need to adapt for AI!” one more time…
November 21, 2025 at 4:26 PM
kslater.bsky.social
erisdrew.bandcamp.com/album/dj-kic...
DJ-Kicks: Eris Drew, by Eris Drew
21 track album
erisdrew.bandcamp.com
November 20, 2025 at 10:03 PM
Reposted by kay slater
charleswlogan.bsky.social
Last week, I gave a talk pushing back against claims that AI will democratize education, and I included this slide meant to trouble narratives - and self-serving programs like OpenAI's new "free" ChatGPT for teachers - that focus narrowly on access to technology as some kind of transformative force.
A screenshot of slide titled "Troubling Narratives of Access" followed by three quotes: The first is from Tressie McMillan Cottom and reads, "Predatory inclusion is the logic, organization, and technique of including marginalized consumer-citizens into ostensibly democratizing mobility schemes on extractive terms” (Cottom, 2020, p. 443)." The second is from Daniel Greene and reads, "The access doctrine decrees that the problem of poverty can be solved through the provision of new technologies and technical skills, giving those left out of the information economy the chance to catch up and compete” (Greene, 2021, p. 5)." And the third quote is from Roderic Crooks and reads, "Part of what makes access to technology so appealing is that it offers a way to address inequality among minoritized peoples without having to identify or name the racism and structural oppression that shape the life chances of all people” (Crooks, 2024, p. 15)."
November 20, 2025 at 1:40 AM
kslater.bsky.social
do AI adopters in libraries understand that refusing/protesting a system is diff. than blaming individuals affected by a system?

when they claim refusal of AI is “not helpful,” what i hear is that they aren’t making a connection between their labor as information workers to data workers in Kenya
November 19, 2025 at 10:48 PM
Reposted by kay slater
tnewmsblues.bsky.social
New paper! Let’s not overemphasize AI “upskilling” as a response to CEOs saying AI is gonna replace us.
November 19, 2025 at 7:07 PM
Reposted by kay slater
libraryfutures.bsky.social
Learn how to keep your library makerspace legally sound and open to all! @schutton.bsky.social, @kslater.bsky.social, and Tomas A. Lipinski will offer insights and answer questions on all things maker. Read more and register -->

nyu.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
Made in the Library: Creativity, Copyright, and Community, Wednesday, December 3 1 pm ET/10 am PT / Library Futures logo / people engaged in library making surrounded by tree branches
November 19, 2025 at 5:52 PM
Reposted by kay slater
datasociety.bsky.social
In a time of economic difficulty, "some of these townships are saying, ‘Well, why not?’” when it comes to data centers, D&S researcher @livgar.bsky.social says. Others are wary of the major changes data centers have brought to communities like their own. www.newsfromthestates.com/article/data...
Data center growth drives locals to fight for more say
When local activist Frank Arcoleo found out over the summer that a data center was coming to his neighborhood in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he said he was furious. There’d been no votes or public hearin...
www.newsfromthestates.com
November 18, 2025 at 9:14 PM
Reposted by kay slater
sonjadrimmer.bsky.social
People need to reckon with the hypocrisies of governments prepared to suport products that algorithmically fabricate history while stripping funding from the archives and repositories that hold actual historical artifacts. This is far more expansive than the cyberattack on the British Library.
November 18, 2025 at 2:36 PM
kslater.bsky.social
disappointing news from my alma mater.

SAIC president: “structural changes are necessary to ensure the long-term health of SAIC…SAIC is facing a significant financial shortfall due to a decline in enrollment—particularly among international students”
www.artforum.com/news/school-...
SAIC Guts Video Data Bank
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago cut staff at the Video Data Bank and announced major cutbacks to the contemporary video art repository.
www.artforum.com
November 18, 2025 at 4:43 AM
kslater.bsky.social
desperately hoping (praying) that pauses in PhD admits are not longer than a year, acceptance rates will not get smaller, and that i will be able to study in the state where i live and work. amen
November 18, 2025 at 3:06 AM
Reposted by kay slater
sonjadrimmer.bsky.social
As Langdon Winner put so well 40 years ago, don't fall into the trap of accepting "RISK" as a good framework for these conversations. Business interests love framing their violence in terms of "risks & rewards" bc as a society, we love to heroize & reward risk-takers. Talk instead about "HAZARD."
But from the point of view I've described here, the risk debate is one that certain kinds of social interests can expect to lose by the very act of entering. In our times, under most circumstances in which the matter is likely to come up, deliberations about risk are bound to have a strongly conservative drift. The conservatism to which I refer is one that upholds the status quo of production and consumption in our industrial, market-oriented society, a status quo supported by a long history of economic development in which countless new technological applications were introduced with scant regard to the possibility that they might cause harm. Thus, decades of haphazard use of industrial chemicals provide a background of expectations for today's deliberations on the safety of such chemicals. Pollution of the air, land, and water are not the exception in much of
November 17, 2025 at 12:55 PM
kslater.bsky.social
oh my god… NETWORK (1976) box set coming to Criterion with an essay by @jamellebouie.net!!!

www.criterion.com/films/34869-...
Cover of Criterion’s cover of NETWORK directed by Sidney Lumet
November 17, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Reposted by kay slater
smashfizzle.bsky.social
Ryan Coogler said part of his influence for making Sinners was a childhood love for the Disney movie “Luck of the Irish” and let me tell you…he is so real for that.
November 16, 2025 at 3:27 AM
Reposted by kay slater
go-for-a-walk.bsky.social
How will librarians be able to plan programming, do outreach, and get to know regulars while bouncing around from branch to branch? Your guess is as good as mine. Call your alder and leave a message this weekend. We need all of our staff restored. Find your alder at bit.ly/callmyward
November 16, 2025 at 12:38 AM
kslater.bsky.social
i have been patronizing a suburban public library & had items marked lost. even tho i have worked in public libraries for the last 5 years, & that i knew i wouldn’t actually have to pay the bill upon returning them—the RUSH i felt when the worker confirmed i did not, in fact, owe the library $100!
November 15, 2025 at 11:26 PM
Reposted by kay slater
alexhanna.bsky.social
Excellent short piece contesting the "technological revolution" narrative around the printing press, and how the metaphor of the tech "democracizing knowledge" is deeply flawed.
November 15, 2025 at 5:21 PM
kslater.bsky.social
this cover is bananas
Paperback of “Logic and Information” by Keith Devlin
November 15, 2025 at 6:19 PM
kslater.bsky.social
so many kids who come into the makerspace don’t know how to use a mouse :(
maysuser.name may @maysuser.name · 11d
we don't talk enough about the damage that widespread chromebook adoption by schools has done to computer literacy in children
November 15, 2025 at 4:36 AM
kslater.bsky.social
new blog post: transcript from my talk on “Against AI: Critical Refusal in the Library” @ Library Trends on 11/12

online-roleplay.ghost.io/against-ai-l...
Fifth, this idea of “inevitability” has captured much of the discourse. The idea of “adapt or die” is toxic, and is aligned with the white supremacist notions of “binary thinking, perfectionism, and worship of the written word.” Instead, I ask, can we imagine and work towards other futures besides one escribed by capital? To attempt to encapsulate all of what I’ve discussed today, and more discussion in the article regarding facial recognition, environmental harms, and researchers to keep an eye on: I think that we “should refuse generative AI because it is a ‘destructive force’ that is infrastructurally racist, marketed as a solution to increasing socioeconomic disparity while gleefully scraping all possible traces of digital and digitized labor…[it] does not magically produce information with integrity without requiring further human scrutinization, and creates an unnecessary excess of energy emissions that is detrimental to our ecosystem” (p. 601).
November 13, 2025 at 8:05 PM
kslater.bsky.social
“AI is a backlash. AI is anti-worker.
I always feel the need to remind people that neither robots nor AI are coming for our jobs. But management probably is.”

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/ai-grief-obs...
AI Grief Observed
These remarks were delivered this evening at the Creatively Critical Tech Speaker Series at Illinois State University. "There is no good way to say this." These are the opening words of Yiyun Li’s l...
2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com
November 13, 2025 at 1:34 AM
kslater.bsky.social
listening to techno & drum ‘n’ bass very loudly on my commutes has been extremely beneficial to my mental health
November 12, 2025 at 9:19 PM