INTERFACE

Monday 11/27: What's all the Ruckus at OpenAI?

Join us as we recap the headlines and discuss the societal dimensions of this fiasco. Is the advancement of AI moving too quickly, as critics fear? How does OpenAI's role as a non-profit play into this, as opposed to for-profit and government counterparts? Are boards of directors just getting in the way of visionary technologists? Let's discuss!

Christopher Lidard '25

Monday 11/13: Font Festival 📃

Do YOU have very strong opinions about typefaces? Do you automatically close out of any website that has Calibri? Does Papyrus give you The Ick? Come with your favorite font in mind, because we'll be having a font debate for the ages, as well as a qwerty Kahoot, a short student presentation on fonts, and of course -- boba!

Interface Core Organs

Monday 11/06: More Investors than Startups: The Missing Link in Princeton's Startup Circle

When you hear Princeton, "startup hub" isn't exactly the phrase that leaps to mind. In comparison to the entrepreneur factories over at Stanford or MIT, Princeton seems to be trailing by more than a couple of touchdowns. Sure, our academic grind is notorious for gobbling up free time, but hey, our performing arts and sports scene is buzzing just fine amidst the academia craze. So what's putting the brakes on our startup spirit? And is there a way to crank up the entrepreneurial volume around here?

Yiying Zhang '26

Monday 10/30: Halloween Special 👻

INTERFACE invites you to celebrate Halloween by considering the Scariest Monster of All...technology's effects on society 💀🤖. On Monday, October 30th, we'll be meeting in Frist 309 at 5 p.m. to choose and watch an episode of Black Mirror and indulge our inner FaceBook technopessimists, waxing horrified at the dangers of The Internet and Cell Phones and Whatnot.
(We ended up choosing Nosedive (S3E1): "An insecure office worker living in a smiley, status-obsessed nightmare finds a way to join an old friend as one of society's elites.")

The Interface Core Organs

Monday 10/23: Internet (Slack)tivism

The 21st century has given rise to some of the most powerful tools activists have ever had: the Internet and social media. From Instagram infographics to grassroots organizing to total radicalization, political and community action are intrinsic to online activity, and political identity is a critical part of one's personal identity. Join us as we discuss what this means for activism and politics.

Erin Yoo '26 and Gail Parambi '24

Monday 10/2/23: Animal-Machine Interfaces 🤖🙊

Has science gone too far? Even though usable human cyborg technology seems years away, there are already plenty of examples of Animal-Machine Interfaces that blur the lines between the natural and the technological. Should humans be doing this? What happens when we militarize them? Let's discuss!

Jordan Bowman-Davis '24

Monday 9/25/23: Who Wrote It? 🔍 Unmasking AI Writing

Want to get into Princeton? Become a journalist? Land on the Kindle best-seller list? Find out how, this week at INTERFACE!

"In a digital era where creativity meets technology, join us for a captivating journey into the world of AI-generated writing. From college applications to fan fiction, artificial intelligence has revolutionized storytelling with its neural networks and language models. Delve into the limitless possibilities as we discuss the seamless integration of creativity and AI. We'll unveil the ethical dilemmas and authenticity concerns surrounding AI-generated content, and explore the exciting future where AI-powered authors collaborate* with human writers."

*This above statement was generated by chatGPT with limited input from the presenter and does not reflect the views of the presenter.

Grace Zhao '26

Monday 9/18/23: Metropocalyse: America's Transit Troubles

Amidst the climate crisis, mass transit is a promising alternative to carbon-intensive car usage. One problem: Americans are riding transit less, not more. Join us to discuss the governmental and societal changes needed to make mass transit competitive with cars.

Darius Jankauskas '24

Monday 9/11/23: FISA Fever - Kickoff Pt. 1

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the controversial 1978 U.S. law that governs how "foreign intelligence", including digital communications and phone records, is collected within the U.S. The law is scheduled for reauthorization in 2023, but in the wake of Edward Snowden, the explosion of end-to-end encryption in messaging, and the fading of the U.S. counterterrorism mission, does the law still hold up?

Christopher Lidard '25

Monday 9/11/23: Mining Rush - Kickoff Pt. 2

100 years ago, we tore up the American West in search of gold. Today, governments and corporations are scrambling to scrape the Earth for cobalt to power our eco-friendly electric vehicles – but at what cost? Hint: the answers rhyme with bild mabor and juvernment dorruption. Join us as we dive into the complicated reality of the latest mining rush.

Erin Yoo '26

Monday 9/11/23: The Silicon Valley Shuffle - Kickoff Pt. 3

From plummeting real estate prices in the Metaverse to the fall of FTX, it seems like some of the most-hyped recent tech trends in the business world have failed to live up to their lofty promises. We’ll unpack some of the biggest tech flops of the last decade, including how they came to be and what successful deployment might look like.

Gail Parambi '24

Monday 4/17/23: Beauty Filters: The Reality of Manipulating Reality

Do you look like what you think you look like? Does your phone camera reflect the real you? How do image filters and social media change our sense of self? Join us in Frist 309 on Monday at 5pm to talk about the effect of beauty filters, photoshop, and more on our self-identity and awareness while drinking boba!

Erin Yoo '26

Thursday 4/13/23: Debating Creative 303: For or Against? with the Whig-Cliosophic Society

TBA
This debate is a collaboration between the Whig-Cliosophic Society and INTERFACE.

Daniel Shaw '25 + speakers

Monday 4/10/23: Imagining Intelligent Machines, from Homer to AI

Although ChatGPT was only released this last November, humans have been imagining intelligent machines for millennia. In this talk we will cover a variety of historical examples of ideas about artificial intelligences, and discuss different understandings of how they fit into human society.

Sabrina Reguyal '22

Thursday 4/6/23: Debating Section 230: For or Against? with the Whig-Cliosophic Society

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, first passed in 1996, is a key law regulating speech on the internet. Of particular concern is the “liability shield,” which holds that 'interactive computer services’ generally can’t be treated as the publisher or the speaker of third-party content*. In practice, this means that websites can’t be sued for the content their users post, even if it’s illegal.
The intent behind Section 230 is to ensure that site owners can moderate their sites without worrying about legal liability, which means that this law is key to the way that websites with user-generated content, especially social media sites, function. For this reason, it’s been called “the most important law protecting internet speech” by organizations like the Electronic Frontiers Foundation. However, other actors have argued that Section 230 lets platforms get away with causing real harm to their users. Recently, the Supreme Court has considered this question in the pending case Gonzalez v. Google, where Google is being sued for hosting terrorist content that radicalized certain users on its servers.
This debate is a collaboration between the Whig-Cliosophic Society and INTERFACE.

Daniel Shaw '25, Christopher Lidard '25, Aidan Davis '26, Grace Zhao '26

Monday 4/3/23: Thinking Critically about the Harms of Personal Data

"Data" is one of the most complex and important topics of the 21st century, but the current discourse around data is often very caricatural, simplistic and alarmist. The popular understanding of personal data is that it is a resource that is collected, sold, leaked; this understanding often conflates corporate and criminal uses of personal data, and oscillates between resentment at BigTech's enrichment on the back of personal data harvested from consumers and concern at the risk for identity theft and other related scams. In reality, the dangers of personal data is more complex. This talk will use several case studies (Netflix Prize, Cambridge Analytica, Clearview AI) to illustrate some of the negative impacts of personal data collection, and argue that some of the worst harms use publicly available dissemination (rather than being the result of breaches) and that some of our only protections are to appeal to the legal and regulatory system.

Jérémie Lumbroso, Ph.D. (Lecturer, COS)

Monday 3/27/23: China's Fintech: Current Developments and Trends

Using Alipay and WeChat pay as case studies on China’s financial technology sector, we will discuss the Chinese government's role in shaping emerging markets and how these dynamics affect fintech startups in China today. Alipay and WeChat Pay are two private companies with a quasi-duopoly on “last mile” payments to most customers in China. The Chinese government has grown wary of the fact that these two private companies, rather than the government-controlled banks, have much of the consumer payment data in China — a contributing factor to their recent crack-down on the tech sector. What implication does this hold for Chinese consumers, the Chinese start-up sector, and for international investors?

Julia Zhou '24

Monday 3/20/23: Military: Industrial, Complex

The Department of Defense budget for Fiscal Year 2023 is more than $851 billion, much of which is spent on contracts with the private sector. While perennial debates rage over whether this number is too big or too little, many fear the growing impact of what President Eisenhower dubbed the Military-Industrial Complex on defense policy and strategy. The advent of more advanced defense applications for computing technologies, including potential AI-enabled weapons, has further complicated this debate. Interface will be discussing all of these topics, and more.

Christopher Lidard '25

Monday 2/27/23: Spotify Killed the Radio Star

We will examine how streaming has affected the film/music industries and their creative processes. How has globalization affected film and music? Are film and music noticeably worse than before?

Ben Bobell '23

Monday 2/20/23: Disinformation on Online Platforms - Who's responsible?

In the US, information hosting platforms such as Facebook & Google have been protected from liability if harmful information is published on them, under a law colloquially known as Section 230. This is now being challenged in the Supreme Court. Come join us to discuss how we got here with content moderation & disinformation management, get a crash course on the law and the case in the Supreme Court, and float around what could happen to the future of information platforms!

Hien Pham '23

Monday 2/13/23: ChatGPTina is My New Go-to Girly

Emily Hove ’26 discusses her forthcoming article on parasocial relationships with ChatGPT. Here is what she has to say about it: “ChatGPTina is My New Go-to Girly is an article I wrote to explore the sociological implications of AI prominence in light of ChatGPT’s release. In the essay I briefly break down the components of parasocial attachment theory and its history to better understand how interactions with AI have the potential to draw its users into a socially dependent relationship. I’m excited to hear what kind of conversation this stirs :)”

Emily Hove '26

Monday 1/30/23: What if shareholders are people too?

The smallish group of people who control companies used to only care about making money, now they sometimes care about other things (notably climate change and diversity). This is a pretty big change and is starting to affect tech firms as well so we should talk about it.

Aditya Gollapudi '23

Monday 12/5/22: The E-Sport Entourage

Everyone must have played Mario Kart at some point, be it a (not so) casual family bonding time or a friendly fire with your classmates. But do you know that there’s a Mario Kart World Cup where teams of professional players duke it out for cash prizes? And this is only one game in the rising esports scene which is generating billions of dollars per year in revenue.

Raheem Idowu '25 and Mai Kasemsawade '26

Monday 11/28: Twitter: Past, Present, and Elon Musk

Twitter has come to take a leading role as a public square influential in both culture and politics, a role which has sometimes put it under fire. It was also, however, a public company that had struggled to monetize its relevance. Elon Musk recently purchased Twitter promising to both bring free speech to the platform and to turn a profit. The initial results have been chaotic. But what does free speech on Twitter look like? How can it be monetized? And are these goals fundamentally in conflict? Join us to discuss and theorize how the future of Twitter will play out.

Darius Jankauskas '24

Monday 11/21/22: The Impact and Ethics of Family Vlogging

Have your parents ever posted your embarrassing tween photos on Facebook? Should parents be allowed to make money off of putting their families and children on the Internet? At what age should we have control over our digital footprint?

Erin Yoo '26

Monday 11/14/22: Formulating Foresight for the Future of the Final Frontier

Space exploration and development appears on track for rapid growth in the coming decades with the emergence of new technologies and players in spaceflight. Space technologies and infrastructure have brought key benefits to life on Earth—GPS, telecommunications, weather forecasting to name a few—up to this point. However, a wide range of possibilities both positive and negative could await the future. In this week’s talk, we’ll explore the possibilities for space development’s future impact in order to consider how decision makers can better prepare for those possibilities.

Mori Ono '25

Monday 11/7/22: What comes after the iPhone?

The iPhone, and in general touchscreen smartphones, have been around for 15 years. The desktop GUI model of computing for 40 years. Which begs the question - what comes next? Our parents did not grow up with constantly glaring 2D devices, and the humans being born today will think iPhones are vintage. It’ll be our generation’s mission to figure out the next glamorous consumer device that future humans will take for granted - how exciting! This will be a talk but also a brainstorm about what this mystical future may be.

Liz Petrov '23

Monday 10/31/22: High-tech Horror

It’s that time of year again, the season when monsters of every variety come out to haunt: ghouls, demons, and – neural networks? As technology has developed and proliferated, so has a bevy of scary media around its supposed evils, from Terminator to Resident Evil to Videodrome. But are these fears nothing more than paranoia, or does life indeed imitate art?

Gail Parambi '24

Monday 10/24/22: K-12 Computer Science education: Past, present, and future

The 21st century has seen an explosion of jobs in the technology sector, and occupations requiring computer programming knowledge are some of the most sought after in the country. But how have our current educational institutions been adapting to these changes, and are students being adequately equipped for these changing markets? Here, we will explore the past, present, and future of computer science education in K-12 schools in the U.S., both from a pedagogical and policy perspective.

Zachary Siegel '25

Monday 10/3/22: iNteRnEt sLanGuagE: What does it mean?

Have you ever read a meme or sh*tpost and then proceeded to ponder just how bizarre online English has become? Should emojis be considered words or punctuation? What even is punctuation? Come hear some assorted observations on the linguistics of internet speak and let's see if we can answer these questions together!

Michelle Liu '25

Monday 9/26/22: Lootbox legality: is Genshin gambling?

The top earning mobile games easily pull over a million dollars in revenue every month, even though they are technically free to play. Many of these rely on gacha microtransactions, such as loot boxes, as part of their monetization model. The similarity between gacha mechanics and gambling, however, has started to draw negative attentions to these games especially given their young audiences. This has lead to increased scrutiny from lawmakers around the world. From age restrictions to spending limits, come discuss how these games can be regulated, if they should be at all.

Raheem Idowu '25

Monday 9/19/22: Why is Internet so expensive in the US?

Internet plans in the US are typically double the price of equivalent plans in other parts of the world. Why is that the case and how can we make it better for those who suffer the most from this? I'll try to provide a glimpse of the answer with all my policy, technical, and research skills. I hope you'll come discuss them with me!

Hien Pham '23

Monday 9/12/22 + Friday 9/16/22: Sanas.ai - Kickoff Pt. 1

Sanas.ai is a new startup hoping to provide realtime accent translation for call center workers. While the company claims to plan on trying to localize for the accents of all customers, in its current iteration the company translates the accents of all of its workers (primarily in South Asia) to an American Caucasian accent. Come discuss how and why this might be uncomfy or if it is at all.

Aditya Gollapudi '23

Monday 9/12/22 + Friday 9/16/22: Internet of (Insecure) Things - Kickoff Pt. 2

Why is there a CPU in your doorbell? The anomaly of cheap complexity is a phenomenon where complex hardware and software (think CPUs and full operating systems) is paradoxically more cost effective than building custom, simpler solutions for edge devices. Unfortunately, it turns out complexity begets vulnerability — why does the anomaly of cheap complexity take place, what are its security implications, and what can we do about them?

Michael Tang '24

Monday 9/12/22 + Friday 9/16/22: Your Data in the Eyes of the Constitution - Kickoff Pt. 3

Is your personal data fundamentally speech, property, or something else entirely? Is information about you online subject to the First, Fourth, and/or Fifth amendments? Despite the ongoing battles over "data rights," scholars can't seem to come to consensus on their constitutional origins. Let's discuss where we stand, where borderline cases arise, and how we can move forward with constitutionality in the information age.

Christopher Lidard '25

Wednesday 5/4/22: What Tech Calls Thinking

Disruption and dropping out are typical key words associated with Silicon Valley's quest to change the world. But where does Silicon Valley philosophy and ethos come from? Drawing from Adrian Daub's book What Tech Calls Thinking, we'll trace the genealogy of some of these core ideas and reflect on what impact this has on tech today.

Sabrina Reguyal '22

Monday 4/25/22: Understanding the Elizabeth Holmes & Theranos Story

The meteoric rise and subsequent fall of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos (her failed blood-testing start-up) have captured the public imagination. In particular, Holmes's recent trial has sparked conversations about gender, power structures, and how we regulate emerging health technologies. In this meeting, we will discuss what Theranos set out to do, why it didn't succeed, and what its trajectory tells us about our current regulatory approaches. We'll also look at why the Holmes story has so thoroughly captivated audiences both within and beyond the biotechnology space, as well as at the broader issues that the Theranos scandal has come to represent.

Natalia Orlovsky '22

Monday 4/18/22: Student Thesis Discussion

Sabrina Reguyal '22

Monday 4/11/22: Free Speech in the Digital Age

Social media platforms have become increasingly important parts of our social, professional, and civic lives — as a result a small handful of corporations have not only profited immensely but gained immense control over and perhaps responsibility for what happens in these pseudo-public spaces. In the process they have come under heavy criticism ranging from accusations of partisan bias to insufficient moderation of hate speech or disinformation. Come join Darius Janauskas '24 to discuss who ought to control speech on these platforms and what economic, legal, and technological methods might be employed to exercise that control.

Darius Jankauskas '24

Monday 4/4/22: Semiconductors, Supply Chains, and Taiwan, Oh My

This club frequently talks about the social impacts of computing applications, but how about the physical chips that they're made out of? Let's take some time to chat about the craziness of the semiconductors industry and supply chain, as well as its connections to tensions in the Taiwan Strait. There will be a short presentation followed by ample time for everyone to discuss as a group!

Julia Zhou '24, Betsy Pu '22

Monday 3/28/22: Right to Repair

"Right to Repair" is the idea that if you own something you should be able to repair it yourself. Over the past several years, however, many companies have made this far harder. While they often claim that this is necessary - some argue that these restrictions are to force consumers to either simply replace broken devices or buy repair services directly from the manufacturer. Come discuss why we should all be mindful of this issue, and how people are fighting to ensure the continued "Right to Repair"

Jason Oh '24

Monday 3/21/22: So what is this "privacy" thing anyways?

In tech policy discussions we often assume that privacy is something to be protected, but what is privacy? Is it a right like liberty? A privilege? What does it mean to violate privacy? Can we define it at all? Come and discuss some of the ways philosophers have tried to answer these questions in the past and how we might answer them now.

Aditya Gollapudi '23

Tuesday 2/22/22: So Uh What Is This "Hacking" Thing Really

Let's walk through compromising a (relatively simple) machine to understand what vulnerabilities and attacks look like in real* world settings. This will be a technical demo, but you're welcome to join even if you have no idea what a hack would look like. Time permitting, we'll discuss how institutions can be designed to help minimize vulnerabilities.

Monday 2/14/22: Parasocial Relationships & Remote Intimacy - A Valentine's Special

On this day of commercialized love, let's talk about how intimacy works in the digital era! Parasocial relationships powers the influencer & creator economy - how does it differ from a normal relationship, and what mechanics of technology enables this? Long-distance intimacy is becoming the norm - what sort of things can you do with tech beyond video calls & text messages? When two worlds collide, what do you get? What does all of this mean for contemporary sex work? Join us as we glimpse into the future of intimacy x technology!

Hien Pham '23, Sabrina Reguyal '22

Monday 2/7/22: Federated Learning : Can We Learn Without Sharing Our Data?

Over the last several years concerns have grown over the vast amount of data harvested from our devices by corporations. At the same time regulations around special types of data such as patient records, as well as geographic regulation like GDPR make it hard to build centralized datasets for many problems. Come hear Michael Tang '24 talk about Federated Learning - a potential solution to both of these problems which might allow for the benefits of machine learning models without data ever leaving its source.

Michael Tang '24

Monday 11/29/21: Radio Broadcasting and Regulation

Radio is one of the most powerful mediums in the U.S., with a weekly reach of about 82.5% of adults. Furthermore, radio broadcasts have the ability to cross borders and deliver information, even when phone lines are cut, when the Internet is blocked, when access to technology is prohibitively expensive, and when illiteracy rates are high. As such, it has a significant power in shaping political and cultural outlooks among the public. Join us for a rousing history of the radio industry and a broader discussion of modern-day public discourse!

Sabrina Reguyal '22

Monday 11/22/21: Cyber Warfare Pt. 2: International Legal Implications

An invisible war is raging all around us, all the time-- ongoing military and intelligence cyber operations occur perpetually on the networks we use to work, play, and connect. So much so that Microsoft President Brad Smith has called for a “Digital Geneva Convention” to clarify international laws concerning the nebulous world of electronic warfare and related attacks. But would such a document be tenable? What does this mean for the future of warfare, the role of military actors, and the state of international relations?

Christopher Lidard '25

Monday 11/15/21: Surveillance, Data, and Privacy in Cellular Networks

Our phones are the endpoints of the global telecommunications network, linking us to the Internet. At any time they can become surveillance devices, giving that network's operators a direct view of your life. Identity, location, and relationships can all be linked. How does this system work, what led us here, and can we build an alternative?

Robert Liu '20

Monday 11/8/21: Design Justice for Informing Tech Policy

Though "design" is often associated with tech companies, Sasha Constanza-Chock reminds us in Design Justice that it is an expansive term: "design means to make a mark, make a plan, or problem-solve." In a post-techlash world where many former employees of tech companies are moving into the policy realm, I argue that we must be wary of technocratic solutionism in Washington just as much as we are beginning to decry its flaws in Silicon Valley. What can policymakers learn from the demands being made of technologists to embrace comprehensive programs of social, political, and technical change, like those found in Design Justice?

Matthew Sun 'GS

Monday 11/1/21: AI Crash Course for Community Leaders & Policy Makers

Have no idea how any of this Artificial Intelligence stuff works but keep hearing about it in the news? Come through for an informal crash course on AI concepts that most commonly affect our society & policies, from fellow ethically-minded undergrads. Send in your questions through the RSVP form!

Aditya Gollapudi '23, Hien Pham '23

Monday 10/25/21: Cyber Warfare

As digital and computing technologies infiltrated society, they have evolved from niche devices to critical infrastructures. What happens when a nation-state tries to undermine a rival nation-state through a cyber attack? At the intersection of computing, hacking, spycraft, and social manipulation, “cyber warfare” is an emerging form of warfare that might pose a grave threat to modern life. Join us to learn more about cyber warfare: what it is, how it’s done, and where it will take humanity.

Miguel Opena '22

Monday 10/4/21: The Metaverse: The Next Evolution of the Internet?

Tech giants from Facebook to Epic Games have all recently been funneling millions towards something called "the Metaverse." But what exactly is it? Can "Web 3.0" truly be a successor to our current idea of the internet, or is this just another dystopian nightmare? Join us this week to talk about the Metaverse - a cyberpunk hyperreality ripped straight out of 90s Sci-Fi novels

Carl Zielinski '24

Monday 9/27/21: Mini-Presentations:

Demystifying Market-Making:

INTERFACE has previously discussed questions around graduating and using our skills in ~Big Tech~, but have you heard the term high-frequency trading or seen Jane Street t-shirts around campus and want to know more? Have you ever wondered how big financial companies leverage technology to affect the economy, and even retail investors on an individual level? In this talk, we will explore how the stock market works, specifically the concept of market making, and the effect it has on the overall economy and retail investors. No prior knowledge about stonks or finance is necessary!

Alan Chung '22

Comically Dark Patterns:

Websites and apps frequently use tricks to make users do things that they didn't intend to. These tricks, dubbed dark patterns, range from relatively innocent schemes that involving getting more clicks to multimillion dollar industries that rely solely on sneaky web and app design. Join us in this talk to see some funny examples of intentionally bad web and app design.

Rahul Saha '22

Monday 9/20/21: Apple's Child-safety Photo-Scanning Plans

What's going on with Apple's system to detect CSAM (Child Sexual Assault Material)? Why are people concerned about it? How does Apple's system fit into the existing legal and technical framework around CSAM? Recent events have raised many difficult questions, come discuss them with us!

Aditya Gollapudi '23, Betsy Pu '22

Monday 9/13/21: The Philosophy of Surveillance: Foucault's Panopticon

Join us to talk about ways to understand the modern surveillance state using the ideas of Foucault and his philosophy of "disciplinary society". We'll start with a simple introduction to his theory, and then talk about how it might apply to our modern conditions.

Sabrina Reguyal '22

Saturday 9/11/21: INTERFACE KICKOFF #2

Welcome back! We'll kickoff the year with a primer of some frequently discussed topics in tech x society studies, such as core biases in ML, community tech, surveillance, and more. The kickoff meetings are identical, so come to ONE of them.

- Your Humble Organizers

Monday 9/6/21: INTERFACE KICKOFF #1

Welcome back! We'll kickoff the year with a primer of some frequently discussed topics in tech x society studies, such as core biases in ML, community tech, surveillance, and more. The kickoff meetings are identical, so come to ONE of them.

- Your Humble Organizers

Sunday 7/25/21: Where should I work after graduation? - A social psychology perspective

Building off of Hien and Daniel's presentation near the end of the school year, Matthew will investigate the age-old question of "Where should I work after graduation?", not by examining different ethical frameworks, but rather from an (armchair) social psychology perspective. The aim is that looking inward and interrogating our own positionality will allow us to move forward beyond overly reductive narratives of good and bad (companies/people) and toward a more realist attitude of collective change.

Matthew Sun 'GS

Sunday 5/2/21: Do you sell out to Big Tech or do you not?

At INTERFACE, we’ve probably all asked ourselves this at least once before. But it’s definitely not that simple, right? RIGHT? Join us as we attempt a normative zoom out on dissecting these questions.

Daniel Wey '22, Hien Pham '23

Sunday 4/25/21: Cyborgs and Cognitive Enhancements

Cognitive enhancements can take many diverse forms, from conventional means such as education and training to more unconventional ones such as neural implants, gene therapy, and nootropic drugs. But what happens when such enhancements becomes a commodity? Who regulates neural enhancers, and what are the implications on society at large?

Rahul Saha & Sabrina Reguyal '22

Sunday 4/11/21: Lil Nas X & IP Bull

Chill hang + chat about IP law

Sunday 4/4/21: The System of Crowdsourcing Wisdom

Wikipedia - high school teachers hate it, but we all use it. In recent years, Wikipedia content has become the de facto first impression for anyone looking up anything with an article, providing 3 seconds of explanations or sources for a whole paper. But how trustworthy is Wikipedia, how does it even work and what are its pitfalls? Join us in exploring the behind-the-scenes of the world's largest encyclopedia, with all its rules, dramas, and alphabet soup.

Wendy Ho '21, Hien Pham '23

Sunday 3/28/21: Pixel Affection: Tech-Mediated Touch, Conversation, and Companionship

From cuddle-able Japanese robot seals designed for elderly care homes, to a proliferation of YouTube video genres such as mukbang for simulating company, to a Microsoft-developed AI chatbot girlfriend, tech-mediated companionship has slowly expanded its reach over the past twenty years. Furthermore, a year of quarantine in which friends and family are only reachable through video chat has both led to an explosion of virtual personal interactions and a widespread deliberation of where the boundaries for such incorporeal life lies. Swing by and let's try to beat back loneliness by discussing loneliness together!

Sabrina Reguyal '22

Sunday 3/21/21: Faceblock: Unfriending Australia

The recently passed Australian News Media Bargaining Code will significantly change the media economy in not only Australia but will likely have ripple effects around the globe. Will its end result be the saving of print media or perhaps the further forced consolidation of media companies? Does it violate fundamental norms of the web - is that a bad thing? Who won this negotiation, Google/Facebook or the Morrison Administration and what does that suggest about the power balance between tech giants and small-medium sized countries? Come discuss these things with me and hopefully we can be less confused together.

Aditya Gollapudi '23

Sunday 2/28/21: Defense Against the Dark Ads

Facebook knows what you did last night. Google follows you everywhere on the Internet. In the shadows, unscrupulous data brokers aggregate and sell your data for pennies to the highest bidder. Is privacy dead? Not. Yet. Come learn about behind-the-scenes mechanisms that collect your data, and how to limit what Big Tech knows about you.

Sandun Bambarandage '20

Sunday 2/21/21: Revisiting Digital Contact Tracing

So … what happened with all of that buzz about digital contact tracing apps? What is the role of privacy and (mis)trust of government in their adoption (or lack thereof)?
Will my citizens get mad if I promise only to use their tracing data for pandemic-related purposes and then give it to the police?

Hien & Betsy will lead a short presentation on the current state of digital contact tracing, but we’d also love to hear all of your thoughts on pandemic-technology strats & privacy tradeoffs during our round-table discussion afterwards.

Sunday 2/14/21: Open-Source Intelligence in Journalism

Can you solve mysteries of the world by just looking at social media or Google Maps? This meeting, we have the pleasure of being joined by a guest who will speak about the use of open-source intelligence techniques within investigative journalism. Bellingcat journalists have applied these techniques in high-profile cases such as identifying the poisoners of Alexei Navalny.

Giancarlo Fiorella is an investigator and trainer for Latin America at Bellingcat. He is also a PhD candidate at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto, where his research focuses on protest policing and civil conflict.

Sunday 2/7/21: Encrypted Messaging and Society - A Critical Look at the Rise of Telegram and Signal

Both Telegram and Signal have become prominent in organizing social movements, such as the 2020 BLM and Belarus protests. At the same time, they have offered a platform for jihadists, far-right extremists, and other violent, hate-based groups. We will discuss the background of these apps and the intriguing questions they raise about the future of social movements, censorship, and countermeasures against violent extremism.

Sabrina Reguyal '22

Sunday 11/22: Deus Vult! How the Alt-Right Co-Opted the Crusades

To history buffs, Crusader memes are harmless fun. On more insidious corners of the Internet, they inspire acts of violence. Come find out how a 1000-year-old ideology became a potent radicalization tool for white supremacists and far-right extremists.

Sandun Bambarandage '20

Sunday 11/15/20: AI-Generated Art

Is AI-generated art "real" art? What do technologies like deepfakes and NLP-generated text, images, and music spell for the future of art and entertainment?

Betsy Pu '22

Sunday 11/08/20: INTERFACE scribble

Unwind from a stressful elections week with some technology-and-society themed pictionary.

Sunday 11/01/20: Russian Digital Disinformation

Twitter bots emphatically denying they are bots. Troll factories that advertise open positions on Facebook. Election-related allegations against Hunter Biden.
Recently, Russian digital disinformation is in the news again. Russia is not exactly the tech capital of the world, so why is it so good at online propaganda? Can this propaganda be effective? If so, when? I will address these questions with some Russian history, results of my own research, and the collective wisdom of political science.

Sergey Sanovich (CITP)

Sunday 10/18/20: Movie Hang

Come watch the spicy new documentary The Social Dilemma with us for a post-midterms break!

Sunday 10/04/20: The TikTok - WeChat Ban and National Security

The Trump administration tried to ban TikTok and WeChat. Judges blocked it, but there's more to the headlines. Is the Chinese government seriously threatening US national security through these apps? Does selling TikTok to a US company actually make a difference? What does this mean for global technology platforms? Join us for a rundown of everything that happened in this story and a discussion of what's to come.

Hien Pham '23

Sunday 9/27/20: Googling: A Historian's Approach

Googling. That convenient thing we do when we want to know something, quick. But this tool that we use with ease has changed human thought and behavior. A historian-by-training, I present to you not only what has happened but try to answer how and why. We explore theories and philosophies of the machine and of the human.

Allison Huang '21

Tuesday 9/15/20, 8:30pm ET: Social uwu

Play games and get to know us!

Sunday 9/13/20: Kickoff / Open House :3

A warm welcome to INTERFACE, accompanied by a mini-presentation on surveillance tools by Sabrina Reguyal '22

Tuesday 8/25/20: Health data sharing in the US: what we know (or, what the government doesn't) ಠ_ಠ

Health data has long been recognized as one of the most sensitive -- and thus best-protected -- categories of personal data. Recently, it's also become clear that the health industry is a lucrative new arena for technology companies, all of whom stand to benefit from access to protected health data in order to improve their processing or to train their models. You might hope that federal and state governments have oversight mechanisms in place to understand how and how frequently health data is shared with private companies. Boy do I have a (research-project-based, FOIA-enabled) story for you!

Maia Hamin '20

Tuesday 8/11/20: The Digital Divide

What factors lead to the divide in broadband access in the US? What are the issues in measuring this divide and creating policies to correct it? Join our discussion with Oliver Hsu '20 and David Major '20 whose theses studied the rural/urban broadband divide and ISP misreporting of coverage.

A Conversation w/ David Major '20, Oliver Hsu '19

Tuesday 7/28/20: Regulation vs Electronification in Finance

Over the past few decades, financial markets have transitioned from being a bunch of humans shouting at each other in exciting places like Manhattan to being a bunch of computers quietly calculating trades in unexciting places like New Jersey. But, like so many laws, the laws which govern financial markets are rarely updated, and lag behind the technology used. I'll explore the challenges faced by engineers in finance as innovation comes up against laws which were not written with modern technology in mind.

Andrew Wonnacott '19, Old Mission Capital

Tuesday 7/14/20: A Quick Visit to the Wireless World with Software Defined Radio

From satellites and commercial airplanes to restaurant pagers and proxes- they all rely on the same means of communication: radio frequencies. We will use Software Defined Radios to decipher these signals and investigate how private and secure they can be. What can we say about the integrity of our own data permeating through wireless space and is it possible to thwart eavesdropping?

Vinicius Wagner '21

Tuesday 6/30/20: Drugs & the Internet: From Counterculture to Modern Computing

What did "turn on, tune in, drop out", the Grateful Dead, and hippie communes have to do with the digital revolution? How was the development of modern computing shaped by the counterculture of the "psychedelic 60s"? How do other manifestations of counterculture continue to shape the internet?

Ahmed Farah '22, Betsy Pu '22

Tuesday 6/16/20: When Weapons are Speech

What is the state of the art of 3D printed firearms, and what is at stake Constitutionally? How will printed arms change the balance of power between centralization and decentralization?

Robert Liu '20

Tuesday 6/2/20: The Internet, Intelligence Agencies, and Neo-Fascism

Join us for a discussion on the new faces of fascism, what American and German intelligence agencies are not doing about them, and the related issues of racism in police forces and the justification for mass surveillance.

Sabrina Reguyal '22

Monday 5/18/20: End-of-Year Celebration

Reflections on how much we've grown! Summer planning! Special graduation ceremony for the seniors <3

Your loving non-seniors

Monday 5/11/20: Dean's Date Eve

Chill hang & Gear design

Monday 5/4/20: A Deep Dive Into the Deep Web

The "Deep Web" is the mysterious underbelly of the Internet - but how true are all the stories?

Sandun Bambarandage '20, Maia Hamin '20

Monday 4/27/20: Data Collection & Processing in Consumer IoT Devices

What sort of data does your wearables and smart home devices gather? What can observers infer from this data, and what happens after it leaves your device?

Hien Pham '23

Monday 4/20/20: Digital Rights in the Pandemic Age

What technologies are countries using to confront the coronavirus crisis? How should governments and citizens navigate the tradeoffs between public health and individual privacy?

Maia Hamin '20 & Betsy Pu '22

Monday 4/13/20: AR, VR, & Brain-Machine Interfaces

What are brain-machine interfaces? How are they related to AR/VR? Why should we connect ourselves to computers and what are the ethical implications of doing so?

Theodor Marcu '20

Monday 4/6/20: Cyber War

Individual cyber criminals steal credit card information. State-sponsored hackers destroy nuclear plants. Join us as we discuss the known cyber capabilities of nations, and what a full-scale cyber war between governments would look like.

Sandun Bambarandage '20

Monday 3/30/20: Industry's Influence on Academia

How do tech companies influence academic research, education, and student culture? How does this manifest at Princeton?

Prof. Jennifer Rexford

Monday 3/23/20: Software Ownership & Control

Should companies own fan-made modifications of their software? Should Google allow adblockers in Chrome? Should we all just go open source?

Alec Leng '21

Monday 3/9/20: Education and Technology

As technology infiltrates classrooms, who’s really benefiting? Do kindergartners learn better on iPads? Is social media presence a useful metric for school admissions? What student data is being collected and sold under our noses?

Ross Teixeira, CITP Doctoral Student

Monday 3/2/20: Visions of the Future

Will facial recognition create a surveillance dystopia? How soon will we have to bow to our new AI overlords? Is it even possible to answer these questions? Come join us for a conversation on how today's emerging technologies could affect our lives in the years to come (with a little help from science fiction!).

Sandun Bambarandage '20

Monday 2/24/20: The Ethics of Countering Disinformation

Warning messages can help counter disinformation online, but should we use them? How should we weigh the risks of censorship, false positives, and backfire effects? Facing these risks, what is the right approach for policymaking?

Ben Kaiser, CITP Doctoral Student

Monday 2/17/20: Issues in Facial Recognition & Surveillance

What are the moral, ethical, and legal implications of applying facial recognition to body cameras and surveillance cameras? (How) should we regulate facial recognition technology in the public and private sphere? How does facial recognition change the nature of protest?

Ayushi Sinha '20

Monday 2/10/20: Amazon & Anti-Competitive Practice

Is Amazon engaging in anti-competitive behavior? How can/should regulators respond?

Maia Hamin '20, Sabrina Reguyal '22

Monday 2/3/20: Labor Battles in Big Tech

What are tech workers organizing for? How are companies striking back?

Robert Liu '20