Museum of Resistance and Resilience

Mimi Onuoha

Mimi Onuoha, a graduate of the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program and a current artist and data analyst, is also passionate about examining the role technology plays in our social life, and in a broader sense, humanity and our archived history. In her speech at the Eyeo Festival, she specifically elaborates on a project called “The Library of Missing Datasets”, exploring the idea of "missing datasets," which she describes as "blank holes in otherwise data-saturated systems", including the prejudiced police surveillance on vulnerable communities, making malicious uses of technology that only asserts the idea of algorithmic biases. Furthermore, her project also reveals that Google Maps lacks map data for Brazil's favelas, leaving out communities where more than a million people live. For years, she has been openly discussing how technology, once misused, can be used against justice and how technological advances utilized by those prejudiced minds, prompts generalization, classification, and stereotyping in our contemporary society. By conducting speeches like this, she has been able to speak out against algorithmic biases in public, and encourages working people like her to take a stand against discrimination based on race, gender, etc.

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