The three-day workshop explored connections between the informal networks of shanzhai 山寨 (copycat) production and the open innovations of DIY (do it yourself) Maker culture. Through a series of panel sessions, discussion rounds and tours through open manufacturing sites in Shenzhen and Shanghai, we explored the fertile zones of creativity emerging between the dense commercial webs of cheap ‘copycat’ electronics, and the back-room tinkerers playing with the latest developments in open source hardware. The event brought together key practitioners and scholars in the fields of DIY making, design and open hardware. The workshop included a public panel discussion at the Rockbund Contemporary Art Museum in Shanghai that lead to an intriguing conversation with audience members about the relationships between copy and innovation, fake and open source, and the ethics of DIY making and labor practices in factories. In Shenzhen, the workshop took participants through the Huaqiangbei electronic markets to source LEDs, phone accessories, copycat versions of the open source hardware platform Arduino as well as the infamous shanzhai phones, a visit to the local hackerspace Chaihuo. The workshop ended with a tour through Seeed Studio, an open hardware manufacturer that has established fruitful bridges between DIY Makers and Chinese manufacturers, remaking what making and production can mean in Shenzhen today. Click here to see photos of this event.

Algorithms are increasingly invoked as powerful entities that control, govern, sort, regulate, and shape everything from financial trades to news media. Nevertheless, the nature and implications of such orderings are far from clear. What exactly is it that algorithms “govern”? What is the role attributed to “algorithms” in these arguments? Can we turn the “problem of algorithms” into an object of productive inquiry?

This conference sets out to explore the recent rise of algorithms as an object of interest in scholarship, policy, and practice beyond computer science. Taking a fresh view on the current wave of interest in this topic, we aim to discuss themes such as:

* the very idea of “algorithms” as a subject and object of analysis
* issues of methodology and the kind of knowledge claims that come with algorithms
* the rhetoric of problems and solutions, success and failure
* questions of agency, accountability, and automation
* secrecy, obscurity, inscrutability
* rules, regulations, resistance

Speakers include: Lucas Introna, Tarleton Gillespie, Paul Dourish, Evgeny Morozov, Daniel Neyland, Frank Pasquale, Claudia Perlich, Robert Tarjan as well as Mike Annany, Kate Crawford, Lisa Gitelman, Moritz Hardt, Matthew Jones, Karrie Karahalios, and Martha Poon.