Dr Matt Mahmoudi
@docmattmoudi.bsky.social
1.9K followers 280 following 68 posts
📝 ‘Migrants in the Digital Periphery’ for Uni. Of California Press, ‘Resisting Borders+Tech’ @haymarketbooks. Assistant Professor @Cambridge Digital Humanities. Research/advice @Amnesty Tech. Views=own
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docmattmoudi.bsky.social
A re-intro: Hi 👋🏽 I’m a 1) sociologist working on new tech frontiers of racial capitalism 2) Researcher/Advisor on AI and Human Rights with Amnesty, and an Assistant Prof. at Cambridge 3) talk to me about AI and apartheid, tech exploitation of communities on the move, “smart” cities & surveillance
Reposted by Dr Matt Mahmoudi
docmattmoudi.bsky.social
Top: Tommy’s racist temper tantrum
Bottom: Carnival

Face rec is deployed along racial logics. Don’t want to read another haphazard study of how accurate the tech is; AI-driven policing is spatially and selectively configured to impart racial violence and selectively revoked to protect accomplices
Reposted by Dr Matt Mahmoudi
abeba.bsky.social
In this short piece, I lean on embodied cog sci to argue that we should refuse & resist llms in education (pp. 53-58) unesdoc.unesco.org/in/documentV...

"the classroom is an environment where love, trust, empathy, care & humility are fostered & mutually cultivated through dialogical interactions"
 But what iseducation? Embodied and enactive cognitive sciences remind us that knowledge is not something discrete that an individual possesses and passes down but an inherently dynamic and evolving endeavour that develops in the process of embodied, curious and engaged interaction through dialogue. The pinnacle of cognition, particularly ‘human  knowing’, is inextricably interwoven with interactions we engage in  with each other and the physical, cultural and social world we inhabit, ‘so much so that individuals are not thinkable outside of their interactions and embeddedness in their (social) world’ (De Jaegher, 2019). Dialogic models of knowledge and education emphasize that interactions between a student and teacher and/or peer provide ‘scaffolding’ for how that child understands the world. The always in flux, active and continually transforming nature of human cognition necessitates that education be fundamentally an ongoing activity. Far from the reductionist view whereby ‘formal knowledge’ can be packaged and acquired from an LLM, the classroom is an environment where love, trust, empathy, care and humility are fostered and mutually cultivated through dialogical interactions
Reposted by Dr Matt Mahmoudi
Reposted by Dr Matt Mahmoudi
rimaanabtawi.bsky.social
A new eyewitness who concurs, saying it's not only the IDF shooting, but personnel hired through 🇺🇸 subcontractors

"There had been so much shooting that human remains had been left there and the smell got quite bad. The security contractors had complained and the IDF said it wasn't their business."
Reposted by Dr Matt Mahmoudi
ccs.bsky.social
Tech bros drooling over Rome is wild.

The empire was a war machine built on slavery + patriarchy. If that’s your inspo, you’re not dreaming of innovation—you’re dreaming of domination

electricliterature.com/why-are-tech...
Why Are Tech Billionaires so Obsessed with the Roman Empire? - Electric Literature
From Mark Zuckerberg to Elon Musk, too many wannabe Caesars are thriving on domination
electricliterature.com
docmattmoudi.bsky.social
I say *new*, but this was submitted in 2022 on the basis of longer term research Graham and I had carried out a little earlier.. for worse or for worse, I’d like to think many of insights still hold..
docmattmoudi.bsky.social
🚨New Article (Open Access)🚨… in which Graham Denyer Willis and I argue that, far from biometric and personal data affixed to individual bodies, Digital ID must be understood as a means of corporate-governmental conjecture in service of capital.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
journals.sagepub.com
docmattmoudi.bsky.social
To surmount the possibility of a crossing, these digital efforts make border regimes and the defence of collective identity elastic, seeking to foreclose any evasion long before an individual arrives at a material frontier – or perhaps even decides they want to.
docmattmoudi.bsky.social
We argue that the making and use of digital identification is about identifying and policing suspect populations before they are biometrically known and that this effort is rescaling the project of knowing individuals and their social relations
docmattmoudi.bsky.social
if biometrics are about knowing individual bodies, digital identity is about placing those bodies within a web that reveals a larger arena of surplus, digitalization, the creation of digital social relations and, ultimately, of global inequality
docmattmoudi.bsky.social
Digital ID is a means to conjecture about what could be because of who someone knows, what they do, where they have been, and what choices they have made with others. Unlike biometrics, digital identity is future-oriented and offers inference about intent and trajectory.
docmattmoudi.bsky.social
🚨New Article (Open Access)🚨… in which Graham Denyer Willis and I argue that, far from biometric and personal data affixed to individual bodies, Digital ID must be understood as a means of corporate-governmental conjecture in service of capital.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
journals.sagepub.com
Reposted by Dr Matt Mahmoudi
7amleh.bsky.social
🚨 Call for Fellows 🚨
7amleh is launching a six-month, part-time Fellowship Program for 4–6 researchers working at the intersection of AI, surveillance, and digital rights in/around Palestine.

📝View fellowship details & apply: 7amleh.org/post/fellows...
Reposted by Dr Matt Mahmoudi
samuelmoore.org
"The successful candidate will work with Professor Caroline Bassett and others in the CDH team to contribute to collaborative research projects exploring AI and the future of creativity"

3-year research associate position at Cambridge Digital Humanities.

www.cdh.cam.ac.uk/about/news/r...
Now Hiring: Research Associate (Fixed Term) - CDH
Cambridge Digital Humanities (CDH) seeks to appoint a postdoctoral researcher in Digital Humanities. The post will run for three years from Spring 2026. The successful candidate will work with Profess...
www.cdh.cam.ac.uk
Reposted by Dr Matt Mahmoudi
alexhanna.bsky.social
Give up on your personal archives while we jam all your data into the content extrusion machine.
Reposted by Dr Matt Mahmoudi
joolia.bsky.social
Because I am angry I will share this again. One of the reasons that Israel is able to target individuals so precisely is that it collects every phone call in Gaza and stores the recordings in Microsoft Azure, then uses AI to analyze and pick targets.
‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians
Revealed: The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe
www.theguardian.com
Reposted by Dr Matt Mahmoudi
danmcquillan.bsky.social
The implicit threat behind the AI hype is the paradigm of Modernity; behind the relentless chiding to use AI for everything is that if you don't, you will no longer be civilised, no longer be part of a fully developed humanity.
Reposted by Dr Matt Mahmoudi
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
I did my PhD in the 2000s, when student-initiated projects began being replaced w/ "be someone's assistant" projects. I applied for AHRC funding. No luck. Started half-time while doing my job as a British Library #maps curator half-time. Re-applied the next year. Still no luck. 1/ #academicsky 💙📚 🗃
eicathomefinn.bsky.social
'The number of student-initiated PhD scholarships funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is set to fall by 60 per cent when new doctoral training arrangements come into effect next year, new figures show.' 1/3
‘Student-led’ AHRC PhD places ‘to fall by at least 60 per cent’
Internal modelling released under Freedom of Information enquiry reveals extent of PhD scholarship cuts, with academics fearing impact could be greater still
www.timeshighereducation.com
Reposted by Dr Matt Mahmoudi
foxglovelegal.bsky.social
Major UK report on the water industry notes the challenge of "data centres for the projected increase in Artificial
Intelligence use, which have a high-water need" assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/687dfc...
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk
Reposted by Dr Matt Mahmoudi
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
Ursula K. Le Guin was "formed by the 1950s, a decade of right-wing assaults on intellectual freedom and economic equality."

@julie-phillips.com on thinking with Le Guin's writing and actions: "As the politics of anger and fear return to power, I try to find encouragement in what she did”.
Reposted by Dr Matt Mahmoudi
brezwrites.bsky.social
The right-wing backlash against #Superman has happened before.

Here’s my @vanityfair.com report w/ the full history —starting with April 1940, when the official SS newspaper attacked the comic book hero & its creators.

Plus, that time Superman fought the KKK…

🔗 www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/st...
American newspaper clips from 1940, “Superman Poisoning American Children, Irate Nazis Claim. Plus, my Vanity Fair story: Can Superman Win the Culture War?
Reposted by Dr Matt Mahmoudi
kerenweitzberg.bsky.social
Excited to share my latest article. It examines how humanitarian data came to be repurposed for citizenship determination, focusing on an often-overlooked form of biometric border-making: the digitized mechanisms for keeping citizens out of refugee camps. tinyurl.com/bde5a6dw
Reposted by Dr Matt Mahmoudi