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Title

Smash the Mainframe: The Collision Between Civil Rights and Computing

A Conversation with Charlton McIlwain, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU and Christian Sandvig, Director of ESC.

Speaker Bios

Charlton is Vice Provost for Faculty Engagement and Development and Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU. His recent work focuses on the intersections of race, digital media, and racial justice activism. His latest book, Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, From the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter, reveals the hidden figures — from the 1960s to the present — who fought the power and sparked a revolution in computing technology. Charlton will explore how “smashing the mainframe” became the way to articulate and demonstrate the clash between civil rights and computing in the 1960s. Moreover, his talk will address what that moment in history can teach us about how to fight back against today’s technological threats to racial justice.

Christian Sandvig is Director of the Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing (ESC) and H. Marshall McLuhan Collegiate Professor of Information, Communication & Media.

This event is sponsored by the School of Information with support from the William Warner Bishop Lectureship Fund and the Martha Boaz Lectureship Fund.