At MIT: technology and militarism; selling sex through mobile technology

There's so much going on in the MIT Gender & Tech course that I wish we could participate in and learn more from-and-about! Tomorrow night they are discussing technology and militarism, with help from Jennifer Terry's Killer Entertainments site on Vectors, and the author's note.

Next week they will have a panel on "Trafficking Networks: Selling Sex Through Mobile Technology": Cell phones now play a central role in transactional sex encounters, facilitating rapid communication between clients, pimps, and sex workers in a geographically mobile context. In this panel discussion, we will consider how technology is implicated in changing the dynamics of sex work, and its contribution to human trafficking in the U.S. and globally. Panelists are Mitali Thakor, a grad student in the HASTS (History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, & Society) program at MIT, whose research is on intersections of technology and anthropology with a focus on varying forms of mobility; and Nikki Valila, Program Director of the ACT (Acknowledge, Commit, Transform) Group Home at Germaine Lawrence, which exclusively serves girls who have been, or are at risk for being commercially sexually exploited.

There are certainly some possibilities here for final projects....