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Stephen Yang!

@stephenyang.bsky.social

780 followers 400 following 42 posts

PhDing @USCAnnenberg // studying the techno-politics of time and public life // prev @Cornell @MSFTResearch @CDT // Los Angeles & 臺北人 https://www.stephen-yang.com/

www.stephen-yang.com

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Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · Nov 26

‼️ First single-author pub in iJoC: ijoc.org/index.php/ij...

Through 2 years of fieldwork and 27 interviews, I trace how participants of underground electronic' dance music scenes reconfigured their shared culture of secrecy with the advent of smartphones.

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Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · Sep 8

Today feels like the first day of class even though it’s already week 3

Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · Sep 7

but how can we “unbracket” critical computing?

Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · Sep 7

apropos of vibes, but striking when “critical computing” papers make critical points only by citing other ACM papers, particularly when a dozen papers are stacked into a single bracket citation [1, 9, 33, 34, 49, 54, 63, 74]

And yes I too have sinned. Effects of formats (cf. Sterne, 2012), perhaps?

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Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · Sep 6

Facilitating a hybrid panel? Turns out it’s just as hard, if not harder, than doing AV for concerts. Speaking from experience. #4S2025

Reposted by Stephen Yang!

Nathan Schneider @ntnsndr.in · Aug 8

Have you noticed that everyone in certain subcultures keeps using the term "first principles"? I explore its origins for Compact magazine: www.compactmag.com/article/how-...

How Engineering Replaced Politics

If an extraterrestrial—or, for that matter, a human being from anywhere else—were to land in Silicon Valley, the traveler would encounter a distinctive dialect of American English.

www.compactmag.com

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Reposted by Stephen Yang!

Pawel Popiel @ppopiel.bsky.social · Jun 26

File under "Ego + Capital + Tech ≠ Intellectual Insight." These self-styled tech visionaries are as full of hallucinations as the AI systems they impose on us. At least there's an excuse for the AI. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/o...

Opinion | Peter Thiel and the Antichrist

www.nytimes.com

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Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · Jun 11

Just got to Denver for #ICA25! Excited to present my work on TikTok's formatting of trendiness at the #DebatingCreatorCulture preconference today

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Reposted by Stephen Yang!

jess rauchberg @jessrauchberg.bsky.social · May 24

What makes an industry an industry?

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Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · May 20

Check out my colleagues’ and my work on sociotechnical errors published in @ijoc-usc.bsky.social (edited by Mike Ananny and Simogne Hudson)! I found the collection incredibly illuminating in helping me think through how errors are/may be claimed, mobilized, accounted for, and cared for

Mike Ananny @mikeananny.bsky.social · May 20

Re-upping this with better direct link to this @ijoc-usc.bsky.social collection:

annenbergpress.com/2025/04/23/i...

If you've ever been curious abt tech system errors, failures, breakdowns, & mistakes, check out this amazing new collection edited by me & Dr. Simogne Hudson, with fantastic authors.

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Reposted by Stephen Yang!

Taylor Lorenz @taylorlorenz.bsky.social · May 12

Hasan Piker detained at the border and questioned for hours over politics. He was asked whether or not he’d interviewed Hamas, Houthis, or Hezbollah members. He was questioned about his opinions on Trump and Israel.

Hasan Piker detained at the border and questioned for hours over politics

"They straight up tried to get something out of me that I think they could use to basically detain me permanently"

www.usermag.co

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Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · Apr 30

thank you Aram! Would love to hear your thoughts on this

Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · Apr 30

Looking beyond live music culture, what if we took this ethics seriously across domains? What would it mean to design algorithmic systems—not to eliminate errors—but to anticipate, establish shared expectations, and repair them together?

Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · Apr 30

But as real-time algorithmic techniques like quantization, looping, and tempo correction become embedded in performance, we need a different frame. I argue that liveness is no longer defined against machines, but with them—through a shared dance with the possibility of failure.

Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · Apr 30

In live music, liveness is often defined negatively: it’s what machines can’t do. A performance feels live when there’s risk—when the artist might mess up, improvise, or push the limits of their craft.

Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · Apr 30

Very grateful to @mikeananny.bsky.social and Simogne Hudson for their editorial vision! Please check out my brilliant colleagues' work on the topic of sociotechnical errors.

The Failing Media Conference also further pushed me to rethink this in a new light: voices.uchicago.edu/failingmedia/

Failing Media – 20th Cinema and Media Studies Graduate Student Conference | University of Chicago

voices.uchicago.edu

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Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · Apr 30

How can live music culture help us rethink the ethics of algorithms when their operations are indeterminate in real time?

This past weekend, I explored this question at the Failing Media Conference in Chicago.

Part of this work was just published in IJOC: ijoc.org/index.php/ij...

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Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · Apr 25

Kittlerbot @kittlerbot.bsky.social · Apr 21

The smartphone is a prosthetic extensions of self, enabling new forms of interaction while altering perception.

Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · Apr 3

Is there a difference between solo dates and romanticizing life

Reposted by Stephen Yang!

wells is making a social media co-op @wells.bsky.social · Mar 13

gotta recalibrate what matters

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Reposted by Stephen Yang!

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · Mar 10

Celebrating the 1-year pub date of "In the Land of the Unreal" with talks in SoCal. Finally returning to the place that inspired this book. Catch me at USC tomorrow and UC-Irvine on Wednesday.

In the Land of the Unreal

Book

www.dukeupress.edu

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Reposted by Stephen Yang!

Foreigners in Taiwan 🇹🇼 外國人在台灣 @foreignersintw.bsky.social · Feb 27

Tomorrow is 228 Peace Memorial Day, which commemorates the February 28 Incident, which was a massacre against Taiwanese people by the ruling KMT. In this guide, we will tell you the importance of this holiday, and how it is celebrated in Taiwan. taiwantravelblog.com/228-peace-me...

228 Peace Memorial Day Holiday Guide – What to do and Best Historical Places to Visit (228和平紀念日指南)

228 Peace Memorial Holiday is a holiday to remember the February 28 Incident in 1947, in which a massacre against innocent Taiwanese people was started by the ruling KMT. It is a day to remember that ...

taiwantravelblog.com

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Reposted by Stephen Yang!

snowgall @snowgall.bsky.social · Feb 6

If you are a Cornell Alum, you can vote in the upcoming Alumni Trustee Election.

This vote is important - two of the candidates are right-wing attorneys who will work to enact their political agenda on the university's administration.

See alt text for more info.

vote.yeselections.com/cornell/

Dear Cornell Alum,

I'm writing about an issue of concern that will have far-reaching consequences for students, faculty, staff, and the future of research and teaching at Cornell. I urge you to take action by voting this month in the Cornell Alumni Trustee Election. Thank you for considering.

If you’re like most alums, you probably don’t think very much about the annual Cornell Alumni Trustee Election. This tradition, rare among Cornell’s peer institutions, allows alumni to elect two trustees to four-year terms every year. All alumni have an equal vote — regardless of when you graduated, or what type of degree you hold.

Usually, these elections are low-key affairs, featuring candidates who have a track record of activity in alumni affairs, and who have been vetted and endorsed by the Cornell Alumni Association’s Committee on Trustee Nominations (CATN).

But this year is different — on the ballot are two ultra-right-wing attorneys, not endorsed by the CATN, who petitioned with alumni signatures to become nominees. If elected, they will hold sway at a critically important time for academic freedom and university governance, and will select, along with the other members of the Board of Trustees, Cornell’s next president. They are:

• J. Kennerly (Ken) Davis Jr., a leader within the Federalist Society, the far-right conservative and libertarian organization that advocates for a textualist and originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. He is also active with the Alumni Free Speech Alliance and the Cornell Free Speech Alliance, which oppose anti-racist DEI efforts, and which promote the nebulous idea of “viewpoint diversity” — the idea that all opinions should be represented in classrooms, regardless of their academic, scholarly, or scientific merit.
• Cindy Crawford, an attorney for the Koch brothers’ primary political advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which advocates to end government regulations of environmental and safety issues, to end public education as a universal good, and to promote other policies that make it easier for the ultra-rich to become richer and to control public life.

What do these candidates believe? In their own words:

Of his student days in the 1960s, Davis wrote: “[T]he devastation wrought upon … all of Cornell by the shameful capitulation of President James Perkins to the armed occupation of Willard Straight Hall by campus radicals taught me forever that constitutionally compliant enforcement of the law and rule-based order is absolutely essential to protecting and preserving the integrity of the academic enterprise and, indeed, all of civil society.”

Apparently referring to campus protest and movements for greater equity and justice, Crawford wrote: “[W]e are at a tipping point in which all elite universities, and Cornell in particular, must decide whether they will remain beacons of learning or acquiesce to demands for censorship, conformity, and political activism. It is relatively easy to pay homage to free expression and diversity of thought. But it can be difficult to uphold those values when confronted by aggressive attempts to shout down (or shut down) that support. I have dedicated my professional life to those issues, and I can guide and defend an incoming administration that is going to face severe challenges and tough decisions that will inevitably spawn outrage, whether real or feigned.”
(Crawford's professional life has been inside Koch-network organizations that seek to support billionaires and to undermine environmental regulations, public education, taxation on wealth, and other functions of civil society and the public good.)

Neither candidate has a significant volunteer history with the university, unlike the CATN-endorsed candidates. This means that they have not built up the same kind of knowledge of the operations of the university as the CATN-endorsed candidates, and it appears that their interest in sitting on the board of trustees is primarily for the purpose of enacting a right-wing political agenda on the university's administration.

The Cornell Free Speech Alliance and other organizations are organizing their constituencies to vote in this election. Since voter turnout is usually low, they can have a big impact.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?
• VOTE before February 28. Every Cornell alum, whether a holder of an undergrad or graduate degree, from any year, is eligible to vote.
• Do you know your Cornell netid and password? If not, you will need to ask for assistance. You have two options:
1. Write to Help+Cornell@yeselections.com
2. Write or email Alumni Affairs at (607) 254-7150 or alumniaffairs@cornell.edu
• Review the candidates’ bios.
• Visit the Cornell Alums Election Page. You will need to sign in with your netid and password OR with a code that you obtain from one of the two sources above.

WHO TO VOTE FOR INSTEAD?

Make your choice based on the candidate bios and statements.

The primary purpose of this letter is not to endorse candidates. However, we face a strategic disadvantage against the organizations that want to elect Crawford and Davis. They have two candidates, and we have four. Every voter chooses two candidates. Their votes will be concentrated on their two chosen candidates, while ours will be spread out among the remaining four. Without ranked choice voting, it will be easier to elect Crawford and Davis.

Therefore, if you're not sure who to choose among the remaining four, CATN-endorsed candidates, you might consider concentrating your votes on:
• Paul Hayre, an Engineering alum, who writes about the importance to his education of his 1980s student activism against apartheid in South Africa, and the positive impact that resulted at that time from students working together with campus administration to make divestment a reality.
• Karen E. Stewart, an A&S alum and long-time employee of the investment management firm TIAA, whose activities include international clean water advocacy, inclusion and belonging for undergraduate students, university financial health, and childcare support for Cornell staff and faculty during the days of pandemic shut-down.

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Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · Jan 30

HUH?????

Sarah Brown @brownepoints.bsky.social · Jan 30

I'm not gonna lie, I'm floored that a university would call off a Lunar New Year event open to everyone because it might be "DEI"

MSU college abruptly cancels Lunar New Year event, citing Trump DEI orders - The State News

MSU cancelled an annual Lunar New Year celebration following new executive orders targeting DEI and concerns from students.

statenews.com

Stephen Yang! @stephenyang.bsky.social · Jan 30

Is the campus getting bigger or am i walking slower

Reposted by Stephen Yang!

Tim Davies @timdavies.org.uk · Jan 17

The first part of the Participatory AI Research & Practice Symposium (PAIRS25) is coming up on 30th Jan from 2pm - 4pm UTC via Zoom. 10+ presentations of cutting edge and critical perspectives on democratic public inputs to AI development and governance. Info and registration: pairs25.notion.site

World cloud of the contents of papers being presented at PAIRS25 online and in-person. Large words including public, participatory, governance, research, communities, systems, data and development. Smaller words include involvement, digital, design, stakeholders, processes, healthcare, accountability and deliberation.

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