“There Is No Neutral Machine: The Necessary Contribution of Social Sciences and Humanities to AI” Keynote Speech — Erkan Saka Critical AI Studies Conference, Istanbul Bilgi University, 9 May 2026 [Formatted by using Claude.ai] To understand AI, we must stop treating it as a purely technical or mathematical achievement. And to explain why this matters, … Read more
I guess I am getting nostalgic. I have started watching my childhood favorite TV show, Knight Rider. It took decades to have self-driving cars. Contemporary critical reception Many mainstream TV critics in the 1980s dismissed Knight Rider as shallow and gimmicky.[2][1] Reviews often called it “silly,” “juvenile,” or “trash TV,” focusing on the implausible talking … Read more
Yesterday I met a guy whom I last saw more than 10 years ago. He seems to be doing very well in video-making for advertising purposes. But I admired his excitement about an undersea documentary he wants to make in the Bosphorus. He even bought a boat for this. Let’s see how it goes. There … Read more
Whose Truth Gets Optimized? AI and the New Epistemic Order This is an edited version of my keynote talk delivered at the IV. International Communication, Digitalization and Society Symposium (ICDS), Istanbul Aydın University, April 28, 2026. The theme of this year’s ICDS symposium — Truth in an Optimized Society: From Democracy to Infocracy — is … Read more
I attended the Artificial Intelligence, Manipulation, and Media Literacy Summit in Cyprus yesterday. Session 3 was in a question-and-answer format, which I prefer to just speaking. I asked Claude.ai to format my answers. I have to highlight that this formatting misses the anecdotes and lively occasions. Well, those who attend get the benefits. Still, for … Read more
Palantir occupies a more extreme place in Silicon Valley but represents a new, growing ethos Big Tech is developing. We have seen the company’s official X message today. A few early comments: This is the nationalist turn. Big Tech now explicitly acts as an agent of a nation-state, which in turn justifies its regulations worldwide. … Read more
I recently visited Müzeverse at Galataport, İstanbul. Müzeverse is a location‑based virtual reality (VR) museum in Istanbul that offers large‑scale, immersive historical experiences and markets itself as Türkiye’s first dedicated VR museum.[1][2][3] Although I believe in the potential of VR, I find it a bit impractical. However, in our 45-minute tour of ancient Egypt, I was … Read more
My TV Turkish Serials Subreddit receives more than 95 thousand visits weekly, and my colleague Alper Kırklar and I decided to curate an edited volume on Turkish Television Series. The series’ global attraction is definitely unintended, but all over the world, I come across people asking me about a particular Turkish series. So here we … Read more
Here comes the new episode for Thoughts on academic life There has always been self‑promotion in academia. People mailed offprints, boasted about books, dropped famous names at dinner. But the contemporary landscape is qualitatively different: platformized, metricized, gamified.[6][8] Academics now operate across multiple, interconnected arenas: Citation and profile platforms: Google Scholar, Scopus IDs, ORCID, ResearchGate, … Read more
Here I show up in Anadolu Agency’s YouTube documentary on social media addictions. Well, you know me, I tried to be as objective as possible, and I am always distant from technological addiction rhetoric. Here I show in a short MESAM video on data security: I am a member of the scientific committee at this … Read more
I have attended a workshop of a COST project, and now I am flying back to İstanbul. The workshop took place on 19-20 March 2026 at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania. RELINK2 is one of the COST projects I could align my studies with. Glad to be part of it. By … Read more
Just finished an article by dear Joakim Parslow, who knows this blog well. I have done some research on the history of the internet in Türkiye, but Joakim goes far past the pre-internet decades, where Cybernetics had some resonance. The article link is here. Parslow, J. (2021). The Mechanical Atatürk: Cybernetics and State Violence in … Read more
I was once a trainer in an EU-funded project, and I spent a few hours with Prof. Ortaylı in 2015 in one of its workshops. I was really anxious about whether he would make fun of me, but he did not (!). According to the project page of RUMVADER (Cemaat Vakıfları Temsilciliği), it was the … Read more
When Algorithms Translate: Linguistic Colonialism, Data Sovereignty, and the New Role of the Translator This post is based on a talk I delivered at the panel “Translation and the Role of the Translator in Digital Communication,” organized by the Translation Association of Turkey (Çeviri Derneği) at Istanbul Aydın University on March 13, 2026. In Turkish, … Read more
Today I was invited to a talk at CNBCE Turkey. The topic was, of course, war, AI, and disinformation. While I was preparing for the talk, I updated my previous report on disinformation in the current war. A few instances of interest: 1- Unconfirmed stories on X and in some regional outlets allege that Quds Force … Read more