We never go out of style (AI, Law, and Otter Things #27)
Hello everyone! The last weeks have been quite tiresome, but I can finally share some good news. I delivered the final(-ish) version of some large works in progress, and a co-authored paper on explainable AI was accepted to a workshop (a link to the preprint will be made available soon). As a result, I now have time to work on stuff I need to do some exciting new projects that have appeared.
Fortunately, I am now joined by a new research assistant:
At first, she was quite shy, but now she seems to be adjusting herself well to life in Florence. So, expect more canine content in this newsletter from now on (without any prejudice to the usual mustelid content, of course).
As some of you might have inferred, Winnie’s name came from “Happy Days”, a play by the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. While the character’s predicament hopefully will not be relevant to our Winnie, my wife happens to be a huge enthusiast of his work and the author of scholarly publications about other parts of his opus. So, choosing the name turned out to be a pretty straightforward process.
This choice, however, got me thinking about who are the major influences on my writing. And then I saw a tweet that prompted me to write a bit about that:
Some of my influences have appeared in previous issues of this newsletter. Many of my intellectual concerns—such as those relating to the social impact of technology and limits to power, prediction, and objectivity—can be ultimately traced to early exposure to Frank Herbert’s Dune. While I diverge from Herbert’s positions on many of those topics, he certainly got teenage Marco thinking about them. If I had been raised on other kinds of literature, I would have probably followed different paths in my scholarship.
Fantasy and science fiction classics are not usually known for their excellence in formal writing. So, my influences for style are mostly drawn from other fields. But I wish I could write like Terry Pratchett. His mix of humour, respect for other ways of life, compassion towards people, and anger against injustice sets up an ideal that my writing, alas, falls far short of upholding. Yet, I try to learn from him whenever possible, especially when it comes to making footnotes interesting.
But I do not plan to write much more about my writing influences. Such an analysis would be unwarranted—especially but not just at this early stage in my career. More importantly, it would bore you to tears while offering little in return. Instead, I will highlight a few pieces of writing that I have read recently and caught my attention in terms of style.
As somebody working partly on EU law, I am legally obliged to mention Joseph Weiler’s ‘The Transformation of Europe’. Its substantive merits as an analysis of the legal history of the EU are well-known, but what struck me in reading the article is how alive it felt. While many other authors could have presented a very dry scheme of institutional change, Weiler manages to write something that feels like an actual intellectual discussion.
Another paper living rent-free in my head is Burkhard Schafer’s ‘Death by a Thousand Cuts: Cumulative Data Effects and the Corbyn Affair’. The subject matter itself does not interest me much in general, but the title caught my attention, and I was really impressed by how Schafer kept the Taylor Swift theme alive throughout the entire paper. And also by how the reference is actually a good fit for the idea of the cumulative impact of data, unlike most pop culture references in scholarship.
On a more technical subject, I really enjoyed Marianne Bellotti’s ‘Kill It With Fire’, which deals with the management of legacy systems. The book makes excellent use of anecdotes from the author’s experience with “old school” software, which show why systems last longer than one might expect, how that becomes an obstacle to change, and how those systems are embedded in organizational contexts. Furthermore, its organization around small chapters on well-defined issues makes it easy to refer to a specific discussion, even though none of the topics can be really isolated from the others.
Finally, I want to highlight Taina Bucher’s ‘If...Then’, which analyses algorithm power and politics in terms of their impact on social practices. Sustaining this position requires an answer to the technical fetishism that has led much of the debate on algorithms to be stuck around the “black box” metaphor. And she does so in accessible prose, first showing how talk of black boxes limits the terms of the debate and often distract us from important questions regarding how systems configure and are configured by social relations. Then she uses three chapters to show three alternative approaches to understanding algorithms. Each of these chapters provides insights while laying down the foundations for an alternative framing of the debate. As such, the book ends up being a valuable starting point for readers interested in the governance of algorithms.
What authors have influenced your writing style and intellectual approach? Please feel free to reply to this newsletter with your own influences and suggest scholarly productions—especially in the law—that you find good in terms of style.
And now, a sneezing otter: