Studying the Datafication of Family Life
This summer, I want to learn how to make my favorite Indian foods. The ones that remind me of home and childhood; Mom’s cooking, in short. I’ve attempted this before but found it frustrating. Other second-gen Indian kids will sympathize when I say that my mom’s instructions have been, well, less than precise. Take dal,Continue reading “Making Indian Food”
The College of Information Studies selected me as the PhD student speaker for yesterday’s commencement ceremony. The recording of the ceremony is below; my speech begins a few seconds after minute 7. The text of the speech is below the video. Hello, fellow graduates of the Class of 2021. What a year. But we’ve madeContinue reading “Gathering in Gratitude: My Commencement Speech”
Today I graduate from the University of Maryland with a doctorate of philosophy in information studies. My college is hosting a 30-minute virtual ceremony followed by a reading of graduates’ names. This graduation is different for obvious reasons—no donning of regalia, no gathering in a campus auditorium, no handshakes, hugs, or hooding, the tradition ofContinue reading “Graduation”
I study privacy. I’ve done so since joining the field of internet studies eight years ago, and I plan to do so for the foreseeable future. But early in my PhD program, a creeping sense of disillusionment made me question whether this work mattered. I was part of a few research teams studying how peopleContinue reading “Re-making Boundaries”
Patience has never been one of my strong suits. When inspiration strikes, I want to act on it immediately. And since ideas emerge faster than the actions to execute them, I perpetually feel like I have so much to do. Work-wise, two projects currently hold my attention: the dissertation and the paper I’m leading throughContinue reading “Patience/Priorities”
How do elementary school educators think about privacy and security when it comes to technology use in the classroom? What privacy and security lessons do students receive? Below, I describe findings and recommendations from a paper I co-wrote on this topic with Marshini Chetty, Tammy Clegg, and Jessica Vitak. I’ll present this paper at theContinue reading “Exploring Digital Privacy and Security in Elementary Schools @ CHI 2019”
One reason I value my newspaper subscription is that it reminds me not to take things for granted. Especially when it comes to technology. In a recent column, the Washington Post’s Geoffrey Fowler recounted a conversation with alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra. Chopra has been criticized for promoting medical treatments based on pseudoscience, and hisContinue reading “Why Deepak Chopra is Wrong About Technology”
Last week, I worked with LaTeX, a formatting system that uses markup language to create documents, for the first time. The experience was: Not as complicated as I imagined, and Offered a glimpse into how the more technically oriented people in my research field think. The decision to use LaTeX was not mine. The organizersContinue reading “LaTeX: A Window onto Another Way of Thinking”
Since starting this PhD program, I’ve wanted to write an academic version of my personal mission statement. I assumed that if I dug deeply enough, or pondered long enough, the contours of Priya-as-scholar would sharpen into focus and reveal where in the realm of knowledge my research fits. My fixation on “figuring it out,” beliedContinue reading “Becoming a Scholar”
Like many people, I enjoy having a routine. This summer, after moving from a cubicle into a shared office space, I began going to campus more routinely and working a similar schedule each day. The regular schedule plus the commute activated more natural boundaries around “work” and “home” time. On campus, I focused a bitContinue reading “Creating a Productivity System that Works for Me”
Priya Kumar