Jen Kagan

Jen Kagan writes words for humans and computers. She wonders a lot about where the tech left and social movement left overlap–and where they don't. Jen is a recent graduate of NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, where she's currently a research resident.

Presenting with Frances Lee and Ron Morrison

Decolonial Design, Black Geographies, and Critical Packet Sniffing

Detroit-based organizer and archivist Paige Watkins has described their work as "laying a conduit across which stories can travel."

We’re thinking about networks in this metaphorical way, as the web of stories and frameworks that shape our understanding of what is possible and desirable. Made material through research practices, we turn to examples from The Negro Motorist Green Book and the U.S. postal service, and open wi-fi networks and packet sniffing tools. By centering these examples, we problematize understandings of networks as neutral and instead stretch our own assumptions making visible their cracks and fissures; uncovering old stories no longer remembered in the hopes of substantiating a future not yet conceived that allows us to survive and upend capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy; relentlessly striving for new ways forward. We hope to use the panel to have a public conversation about our experiences doing this work in different corners of decolonial design, black geographies, and critical technology worlds.

Workshop with Surya Mattu

Intro to Packet Sniffing with Herbivore

This workshop is ideal for those who are interested in learning how to packet sniff or learn what that even means. We will user Herbivore, an open source tool we have been working on that aims to demistify the world of network packets for the uninitiated. A handful of packet sniffing libraries and desktop applications already exist for analyzing network packets, but they were designed for people who have programming experience or a network engineering background; they were not designed as educational tools for people without technical backgrounds. In this workshop we will go through the basics of what packet sniffing means and let you try it out yourself.

Workshop Requirements

You will need a Mac to run Herbivore :( . But all is not lost! Even if you dont have a Mac you can still learn a whole bunch. We encourage participants to work together and share computers.

Note: This isn't a 'hacking' workshop.

The focus is to help participants be able to see how their computers talk to other computers on the internet and the different type of negotiations that take place in the process. If you're looking to 'hack the mainframe' this workshop will probably disappoint you.