School of Computational Empathy: An I School Fan Fiction
These are the remarks I delivered to the graduating masters in information management and systems (MIMS) class of 2019 at the UC Berkeley School of Information as the elected student commencement speaker.
Special Thanks to Max Woolf who made textgenrnn which I used for generating a small bit of the speech.
First of all, I appreciate my classmates for taking the risk of choosing me as their speaker. My name is Soravis. I’d like to start off by thanking our Dean Anno, our dedicated faculty, the whole I School community, and our esteemed guests. It’s such an honor to be here in front of you all this morning.
On behalf of MIMS 19, thanks to all the staff and career service for their support and guidance. And, sorry, we’ll make sure to submit our student satisfaction survey in time!
To the family members of MIMS students who are here today or otherwise, thanks for your patience. Your hidden labor of keeping us sane throughout the program shall not go unacknowledged.
For those of you who are expecting some machine-generated speech from me, I’m sorry to disappoint. In fact, I tried. I ran a recurrent neural network text generator trained by past MIMS speeches and the only legible thing it could generate is “You all are information.”
And, it’s time, my fellow class of 2019. What a ride! Thanks for always staying positive, even upon receiving emails with the subject “Thank you for applying.” Thanks for always signing up to be each other’s pilot testers. Half of I School projects wouldn’t have succeeded without all of your consent. And also, Thanks for Deep Hanging Out. I really enjoyed the deep conversations that we had, not only because it’s fun, but anything that begins with the word ‘deep’ sounds much more intelligent these days.
To the class of 2020, you are a cool bunch to hang out with and it going to be sad to leave you. There is something special about 2020. It’s often the year that some kind of organizationally curated visions are promised to come true, whether it’s zero waste, zero emissions, zero irrelevant Slack messages on #announcement-global (The name of our default Slack channel). So, if 2020 is a milestone for a positive change, 2019 is like one of those nights before the deadline. It’s the time we realize that we might not able to make it in time. So, I do have high hopes in all of you MIMS20s.
At this point in the speech, I should address the identity crisis every MIMS graduate faced which is: what does it mean to hold a masters of information management and systems. Instead of joking about recruiters’ reaction upon seeing the degree on our resume, I choose to take a different path through fiction and speculation. Throughout time, our school has been called the School of Librarianship, then the School of Library and Information Studies, then, today, the I School. Extrapolating on this trend, it would not be a surprise that someday, we would come up with a new name. So, please accept my small ‘fan fiction’ of the future of the I School. You might not totally agree with this.
But, what if someday or in an alternative reality, we’re called the School of Computational Empathy?
As well as the world needs Computer Science, it needs us to make sure empathy is built into the machines. For those of us who are more design-inclined, empathy is already at the heart of our practice. For those of us who are more analytical-minded, what is the act of data crunching anyways, if not a way to understand someone who is not like us, in a computational way?
You might wonder what is the point of bringing up fiction just now. Commencement is a great chance to talk about the future. But, what type of future really? Is it the probable, plausible, or preferable? And, without fiction, it’s often hard to imagine a future that is different from where we are heading. So, let’s imagine what kind of world could the School of Computational Empathy be in?
Would it be a world where Venmo transactions a not public by default?
a world where all websites have HTTPS?
a world where web developers have to testify in front of Congress for overusing cookies?
a world where Alexa insists that, “Your data stays on your device”?
a world where there is truth serum for fake news.
a world where Yoda is licensed under the public domain.
Or, a world where there’s really diversity in tech.
I don’t really have an answer.
But, I do believe in you, all graduates. Let’s go out and shape a future that does not sound like an episode of Black Mirror. Thank you and Congratulations!
