![image of my e-mail address: owen [at] owencking.net](./img/email_owencking.png)
About me
Hi, I'm Owen. Welcome to my home page!
I work on digital information — how to save it, organize it, and keep its meaning intact over the long term. I'm into the practical, epistemic, and ethical implications of automating information processing, especially as related to inclusion, access, and authenticity.
I came to archives and information science by way of philosophy and computer science. You can read more about some of my work below.
Please use masculine (he/him) pronouns for me, or use gender-neutral pronouns.
Archives and information science
I'm the Metdata Operations Manager at GBH Archives, working especially on the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, where we steward many thousands of hours of radio and television programs from US public media stations.
My research in information science has focused on processes for managing metadata and digital preservation, with a focus on transparent conservation of meaning over the long term. My article, Archival Meta-Metadata: Revision History and Positionality of Finding Aids, asks whether and how information about processes of archival description should be included in those very descriptions. I conducted this research while completing a master's degree in information science at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Some newer collaborative research will be published in the Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies and in the IASA Journal in late 2026.
Philosophy and ethics
I have a PhD in philosophy from the Department of Philosophy of The Ohio State University. I've had teaching and research positions at the Department of Philosophy at Oberlin College and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Twente.
Ethics of computing and information
I have written about information ethics in terms of the ethics of prediction. A fundamental problem in the ethics of prediction is the existence of errors without error signals, which occur when a predictive error somehow covers its traces.
I addressed this problem first in the context of artificial social cognition, i.e, automated attribution of mental states (intentions, desires, beliefs) to human beings. Automated predictions of human attitudes can be both presumptuous and self-fulfilling, which are faults that go beyond inaccuracy and stereotyping. For an introduction, see "Presumptuous Aim Attribution, Conformity, and the Ethics of Artificial Social Cognition."
Also regarding errors without error signals, I have argued that the fundamental problem with self-fulfilling prophecies is epistemic -- that a self-fulfilling prediction may obscure any flaws that gave rise to it. The theory is laid out in "Self-fulfilling Prophecy in Practical and Automated Prediction".
Philosophy of well-being
My dissertation, supervised by Justin D'Arms, was called Three Kinds of Goodness for a Person. The aim of my dissertation was to draw more careful distinctions between well-being and related normative categories, such as the goodness of a person's life on the whole. I have developed this work in several articles.
All my research in philosophy is available from my PhilPeople profile.
Teaching in philosophy and practical ethics
I've taught at Ohio State, Oberlin College, the University of Twente, and the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. Back in 2013, I devised and created the Ohio State's course on Computing Ethics (Philosophy 1337).
Online identities
My philosophy articles are listed in my PhilPeople profile.
My ORCID ID is 0000-0002-5246-3037.
You can see all my research in Google Scholar.
In the Fediverse? Follow me on Mastodon.
Connect with me via my LinkedIn profile.
Other thoughts and resources
Support for reproductive choice
I believe that people's bodily autonomy and equal ability to take part in society as they see fit include the right to end an unwanted pregnancy.
I am committed to supporting people in accessing abortion and other reproductive health services. If you feel similarly, you can support the National Network of Abortion Funds and the Carolina Abortion Fund, which help connect US residents to abortion services.
(Obviously, this statement expresses my own value judgments, not necessarily those of any organization with which I am affiliated.)
Philosophy paper marking notation
Do you teach philosophy? Then maybe you end up writing the same guidance on student papers again and again. Maybe you would find some shorthand useful? Check out the Philosophy Paper Marking Notation & Abbreviations I've used. Feel free to try it! Let me know if you have any feedback.
Software antifeatures
Do you ever feel like the software on your phone or laptop is doing a lot of things that aren't necessarily in your best interest? If so, you may be encountering software antifeatures. At a personal level, antifeatures have perturbed me for many years. Additionally, antifeatures raise ethical issues for software development. I've written an introduction to some of the issues, available here: "Is It a Feature? Is it a Bug? No, It’s an Antifeature."