About this Event
Join us for a conversation with UCLA Information Studies Professor Miriam Posner, who will present her new book Seeing Like a Supply Chain, on how corporations manage the massive global movement of materials and products and how those ways of handling information have shaped society.
This talk is part of the Culver City Democratic Club's "Blue Friday" weekend at Village Well. Club Past President Jeff Schwartz will interview Dr. Posner. A Q&A and book signing will follow.
About the participants:
Miriam Posner is an Assistant Professor at the UCLA School of Information. She’s also a digital humanist with interests in labor, race, feminism, and the history and philosophy of data. A film, media, and American Studies scholar by training, she frequently writes on the application of digital methods to the humanities.
Jeff Schwartz also trained in American Studies and Library and Information Science. He is a retired public librarian, Past President of the Culver City Democratic Club, Chair-Elect of the Music Library Association California Chapter, a freelance bassist, and the author of two books on music and society.
About the book:
A history of the technology of supply-chain management from punch cards to neural nets, and how the ambiguity built into that technology helps companies and exploits workers
Seeing Like a Supply Chain is a compelling investigation into the hidden networks that drive our global economy. Miriam Posner presents a blow-by-blow account of the technology of supply-chain management from punch cards to neural nets, revealing how the system’s built-in ambiguity shields companies from accountability while exploiting workers.
Drawing on more than a decade of research, Posner shows how computation converged with the growth of global trade to allow for a lightning-quick, astoundingly efficient supply chain that lets corporations source products without any notion of where their goods are actually being produced. At a time when multinational firms fear the reputational damage of human rights violations in the making of their products, the supply chain’s shroud of vagueness is a feature, not a bug. Posner shows how this is technically accomplished—and how the strategic disavowal of information extends through every step of that chain.
Event venue & nearby stays
Village Well Books & Coffee, 9900 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, United States
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