The Streets Don’t End at the Corner

“The Streets Don’t End at the Corner will take you on a deeply transformative journey. Desmond Patton's self-reflexive account of his efforts to make sense of Gakirah Barnes's life reveals how what we see online is so much more than it seems. This book invites us to rethink our role as social media observers—and to reimagine what it means to see people through their digital traces.”—danah boyd, author of Data Are Made, Not Found and It's Complicated

“Research is always personally impactful, but it’s rare to see an academic write as candidly or productively about the emotional experience of studying Black youth, especially as digital and AI use reshapes access and privacy. Patton draws on the emotions of an outstanding and original scholarly career to provide generous lessons for innovative, ethical, and joyful research and community service.”—Jeffrey Lane, author of The Digital Street

“Read The Streets Don't End at the Corner now. Building on Desmond Patton’s pathbreaking work at the intersection of social work and machine learning, this urgent, moving book transforms how we understand grief, violence, youth expression, and digital life—and shows why AI must be guided by context, care, and justice.”—Mary L. Gray, MacArthur Fellow and coauthor of Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass

“This intimate, timely, and powerful book by Desmond Patton, one of the nation’s foremost authorities on social media and community violence, takes us beyond the headlines into the life of a child whose humanity the world refused to acknowledge—a life and tragic death that changed his own. The book offers a remarkable meditation on the value of human life, the limits of AI, the ethics of care, and the process of discovery. I’m better for having read this book.”—Reuben Jonathan Miller, MacArthur Fellow and author of Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration