Study of the interaction between computation and society often focuses on how researchers model social and physical systems in order to specify problems and propose solutions. However, the social effects of computing can depend just as much on obscure and opaque technical caveats, choices, and qualifiers. These artifacts are products of the particular algorithmic techniques and theory applied to solve a problem once it has been modeled, and their nature can imperil thorough sociotechnical scrutiny of the often discretionary decisions made to manage them. We describe three classes of objects used to encode these choices and qualifiers: heuristic models, assumptions, and parameters, and discuss selection of the last for differential privacy as an illustrative example. We raise six reasons these objects may be hazardous to comprehensive analysis of computing and argue they deserve deliberate consideration as researchers explain scientific work.
翻译:计算与社会之间相互作用的研究往往侧重于研究人员如何以社会和物理系统为模型,以具体的问题并提出解决办法;然而,计算的社会影响同样取决于模糊和不透明的技术告诫、选择和限定词。这些文物是特定算法技术和理论的产物,一旦进行模拟后用于解决问题,其性质可能危及对管理这些选择和限定词往往酌情决定的彻底社会技术审查。我们描述了用于编码这些选择和限定词的三类对象:超自然模型、假设和参数,并讨论选择最后一种作为不同隐私的参数作为示例。我们提出六种理由,这些物体可能对全面分析计算有害,并说它们作为研究人员解释科学工作时值得深思。