Where’s your headshot?

Increasingly, I’ve become uncomfortable with the idea that modern white-collar (or, office-based) work requires distribution personal identity over the Internet—in particular, headshots. In some cases I might want to be easily recognized (for example, my workplace), but in others I don’t (e.g., perhaps by facial recognition technology while exercising a democratic right to protest…). Having my picture plastered around online doesn’t give me an opportunity to decide where and how my data (or identity) will be used.

As a part of my ongoing personal privacy experiment, I decided a few years ago to stop distributing headshots via public social media or professional venues. This is particularly true in the advent of widely accessible AI (specifically image generation and predictive systems). A portion of this stance is also related to identifying and tabulating the “friction” of refusing to cohere with the prescriptions of algorithmic systems, much like the voluntary digital (dis)connection of non-smartphone users.

There are still a few old headshots of me lingering around the interwebs. I would prefer that you not use them (should you need a depiction of me), and instead use the following cartoon depiction drawn by my talented friend, Hershel Carbajal-Rodriguez.

PS: If you’re trying to find me in a crowd (e.g., research conference), please send me an email 🙂