Coffee over Data writers: Introducing Talia

Coffee over Data writers: Introducing Talia

Welcome to Coffee over Data, dear reader.

For this first post, I’ll set down some basics about myself and my future posts.

I am Talia (pronounced like this), and I probably spent 20 minutes googling for ways to introduce myself in this post. The interesting bit about this is that this is FAR from my first blog or blog post, but I suspect social anxiety can get even the best of us. As an aside, however, there are no good blogs on how to introduce yourself in a blog. At least, when you’re not trying to sell anything. I think that’s a rather telling example of how you’re constantly expected to sell your brand in the gig economy we live in, but that’s for a later post.

OK, but what are you doing in this blog?

As you can read in this blog’s about us page, I am a cultural analyst. For those not in the know, a cultural analyst is a sort of profiler of groups of people. This includes people’s interactions with their environment. This covers anything and everything: from their home to the media they engage with. In my own field of research, I look at how we, as a society, create Otherness. Linked to this, I also study how the people who are branded as Other try to overcome this state. That means I am interested in gender, decoloniality, and how systems of power work. In academic terms, I study subalternity and how it is created. This is with the hope to create paths for people to break away from their subaltern status.

For Coffee over Data, I will be analysing how technology is used to create and break down ideologies. Although, it is first worth seeing what data and datafication are: which will be the topic of my next post. Later on, I will also be having an interview with narrative writer and PhD student, Axel Hasen Taiari. We’ll talk about how video games interact with real-world ideas and expectations. For that interview, I will make a call for questions from our readers when that time comes.

Why are you interested in subalternity and ideologies?

Like many others, my interests come from who I am as a person. After all, being a Mexican immigrant to Scandinavia, I am part of a minority. However, I have privileges that others don’t thanks to my skin tone, education, and identity. The thing is, I want other people to have the same chances I have had, and more. I want a fair and equal society, so my posts will reflect that perspective.

If that sounds interesting, then keep an eye on this space for my future posts! In the meantime, I leave you with AlphaGo. This is a documentary on how artificial intelligence performed in South Korea’s Go deep challenge, in 2016.