ABSTRACT
As with the Mercator projection, biases may influence the design of systems that handle and display information, and therefore the experience of users, in significant ways. This kind of bias was demonstrated in 2015 in a gym in Cambridge, which used a digital system to assign numeric pass codes to access the changing rooms. Sometimes issues of bias in digital public space can have significance on a much wider scale. If the presentation of the digital public space is also a matter of making choices, then biases may also enter this and affect the outcomes. Wikipedia is as powerful as it is because it allows updates by anyone, but certain articles on controversial subjects can be the subject of ‘edit wars’ where two factions each try to present their view of the subject to the exclusion of those who disagree.
